One BYU senior is filming a documentary about his journey to find lasting love. Film student Stephen Nelson is on a mission to find true love and get engaged in six months. He said he woke up one morning with the idea, which has now grown into a documentary called 6 Till Engaged.
Though his professors had some reservations about the project, Nelson said whatever the outcome—which is being kept under wraps until the film’s release—he had a lot to learn about love.
“I have a vivid memory of sitting at the table of ten faculty members, where they looked me right in the face and said, ‘If at the end you don’t get engaged, you don’t have a story, and if at the end you do get engaged, that’s kind of a scary story,’” Nelson said.
Nelson said he knows love can not be forced, but he wanted to see how far he could get making dating his top priority for six months. The experiment started with Nelson going on five dates a week. To get over his date anxiety, he flipped a coin when deciding whether to ask a girl out.
All of his dates knew about the experiment in love, and Nelson said he was very careful when filming to respect their privacy.
Nelson said the most important thing he learned about love was how to address feelings of loneliness.
“In reality, there is no happiness [in a relationship] you can obtain that you can’t already attain right now with yourself,” Nelson said.
A fundraiser for the film on Kickstarter runs through Sunday. Nelson plans to enter 6 Till Engaged into film festivals after its online release, where viewers can finally find out what happened at the end the 6 month experiment.
