My almost biggest mistake EVER

I almost made the biggest mistake of my life. I had been dating this guy that I was convinced was my future husband. I thought he had everything I ever wanted and more! He was handsome, religious, a hard worker, and kind. On the other hand, he was self-righteous, rude, manipulative, and a jerk. But I didn’t care. I remember seeing so many red flags knowing that If I married him I would be un-happy but I still tried to convince myself that it wouldn’t matter because I loved him so much! After a couple of months, we decided to take a break where I met another guy that later became one of my best friends. However, that relationship was poisoned with the mental attachments I still had to the first guy. So even after I was out of a relationship with guy number one I was still affected by our short relationship because my RAM was very thrown off. Luckily while I served a mission for my church he got married.
    So why did I do this and what do I mean by “my RAM was off”!? Let me explain by informing you about John Van Epp’s relationship attachment model. This model teaches you how to pick someone who can make and keep a healthy relationship with you. There are five aspects of the model, Know, Trust, Rely, Commit, and Touch. These five components work together to make a relationship and should be followed in the order I wrote them. To stay in the “safe zone” (or in other words a healthy relationship) one only needs to make sure they aren’t proceeding the component before the other. For example, you shouldn’t trust someone more than you know them. You definitely shouldn’t commit to someone more than you trust them, and so forth. To be able to dissect why my relationship was so messed up I will explain a little bit more about each component.
    The first one is Know. How much you know a person is more than just how much you can talk about them. Knowing consists of togetherness, talking, and time spent with each other. These three “T’s” can help you construct who this person really is. Doctor Van Epp talks about a probationary time of 90 days to get to know someone because by that time the “puppy love” is wearing off and patterns are emerging. By three months you will be able to see if there are unhealthy patterns. Now tell me, how can someone truly take a step back and see their partners red flags if after three months they have put the touch component and the trust component before the know component? The answer is, they don’t. 
    Now to continue, the next section is Trust. Trust consists of what your mental picture is of someone. If you trust someone, you share more with them. At the beginning of a relationship, Dr. Van Epp talks about how you should be in-between naive and pessimistic. You don’t want to believe every single thing, but you also don’t want to be so doubtful.
    Reliance - the next segment – is about what the individual actually does. So trust is the mental picture, reliance is what actually happens. An unhealthy amount of reliance would fall under the co-dependent category.
    To speed things up commitment is how much you are bound to the relationship. Being committed can appear in many ways, the highest level of commitment is marriage. And Lastly, Touch is the last portion. You add this in last because any kind of touch creates a connection. Any kind of touch, be it holding hands or having sex, releases chemicals in your body. These chemicals bind you to an individual. That is why it is the very last thing added to a relationship to make sure you have your eyes wide open as you are trying to pick a partner.
    Now That I have explained the RAM model in more detail, let us go back to my horrible relationship with guy number one. To begin, I didn’t know him very well but my trust was very high. I painted this mental picture in my head of who I thought he was and “fell in love” with a total stranger. My commitment was also very high as I put my trust in my mental picture and decided that I would rather commit to this stranger who could possibly be a jerk than to lose him. So, in short, my RAM model was very messed up. It wasn’t until he was married that I was able to finally take a step back and realize why I was so stuck on him for so long.
    Now I’m married to my wonderful sweetheart Clayton and we accidentally followed the RAM model. I was waiting for someone serving a mission for my church to come home so I could date him when I met Clayton. I was so determined to wait for this missionary that I wouldn’t commit to Clayton. So Instead of jumping into a relationship really fast, I went on several dates a week for three months with Clayton before we ever became “official.” So the missionary I was waiting for actually helped me Marry my husband in away.
    To Conclude, if we all followed the RAM model to pick our partners there would be a drastic decrease in divorces. Finding your future spouse has nothing to do with cohabiting

before marriage, and everything to do with setting yourself up for success by truly knowing who will be your eternity. My eternity has made me the happiest person in the world. If you haven’t found yours yet, please read How to Avoid Falling In Love With A Jerk by John Van Epp to learn more about the RAM model.