Choosing a Date/Spouse/Plus One Carefully

Last week, I wrote about the importance of choosing your friends wisely.  This week, I want to repeat that advise, and add a more specific application to it.  You can have many friends; you can only have one significant other.  I want to emphasize here the extreme importance of choosing a potential future spouse with the utmost of care.  As with friends, only more so, you will become-consciously or not-like your spouse.  The nicest, most pleasant and sociable girl around can marry an unsociable jerk, and she will find herself without friends-she is guilty by association, through no fault of her own . . . except a lapse of judgement.  Your spouse will rub off on you, there's just no getting around it.  Maybe this is exactly why Paul says, when speaking of marriage, "Bad company corrupts good character."  If you want to have friends after you are married, you'd better marry someone who's shown himself to be friendly . . . to others, not just to you.  Just as you take notice of how a potential friend interacts with others, be sure and take notice of how any potential significant other treats others . . . and not just when you're looking.