Teach your kids that connections are more important than commitment

If you want to ensure your kids will be on the “The Bachelor”
1. Never show your daughter physical affection.
2. Teach your kids that connections are more important than commitment.
3. Teach your kids there is no consequences for their behavior.
4. Give your kids whatever they want.
5. Teach your kids that their self-worth is tied to people’s acceptance of them.

The next thing ever parent must do to ensure that their kids will end up on “The Bachelor” is teach them that connections are more important than commitment.

If you have watched more than one episode of The Bachelor I know that you will join me in a collective gagging sound whenever you hear the word “Connection.”  They use it ALL the time. “I feel like we have such a strong connection.” “I feel like we really connected, our connection is so different from the rest of the girls here” It’s so shallow and such a travesty that we have reduced a monogamous committed marriage between a man and a woman to  goose-bumps felt over a glass of champagne.

In The Bachelor this guy dates all these girls telling each of them that he feels a “real connection” with each of them, they all fall in love with him and he sends them home devastated because no one taught them a connection is not a commitment. Our culture preaches if it feels good do it, divorce is always an option and that falling out of love is as easy as falling into love. We have to change that for our kids.

Shows like the Bachelor are so destructive especially to young people because it turns love into a sense or a feeling that could come or go based on how high the air conditioning is turned up to at the time. Do you need to be attracted to the person you are married to? It certainly doesn’t hurt. When I fist saw my wife I felt a “connection” how could I not she’s hot as all get out. (alright I’ll stop I’m starting to sound like a youth pastor) Even though we each felt an initial connection and I actually felt like she was the one I was supposed to marry we spent the next 2 years building a relationship that a commitment could stand on. I love my wife and my wife loves me and our love for each other is not conditionally based on a connection one of us may or may not feel.

“It is not your love that sustains the marriage,
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

The crazy part is that in 17 plus seasons of The Bachelor there is only one couple that is married and seems sort of happy. Why? Because at the end of the show the girl who the Bachelor proposes to feels like she is the most special girl on the planet only to a few weeks later watch the show and realized what a fool she is to have believed that their “connection” was unique.

Here is what we need to be teaching our kids and teens about relationships
1. You will not always “feel” in love
2. Your relationship with your wife is forever, your kids will grow up and move out
3. How you treat your mom is how you will treat your wife
4. Marriage and family is God’s idea and when done right will bring you more happiness than a million “Connections”
5. Let your kids see you and your wife resolve issues as a couple and still love each other after
6. Go on dates.
7. Jesus was fully committed to us he didn’t want to die but he did out of love for us and commitment/obedience to the father.
8. Teach your kids to base their decisions on the Bible not their heart because their hearts will ALWAYS betray them.