St. Paul’s Outreach is trying to change the way students think about dating through a program called New Rules of Love and Dating.

The three-week program focuses on love, dating and marriage in today’s era, encouraging its audience to rearrange how our generation thinks about relationships.

Monday marked the second week of the session, featuring speakers Colleen D’Andrea and Casey Dynan who encouraged their listeners to, as D’Andrea described it, “reorder masculinity and femininity.”

Senior Sarah Spangenberg, co-president of St. Paul’s Outreach, hopes the program can influence this generation to improve what she called today’s trend of unhappy relationships with the goal of ultimately improving marriage success rates.

“You look around and marriages are failing. People are hurt; people are unhappy … and everyone desires love,” Spangenberg said.

Another goal for the series is to combat the idea of chemistry, Spangenberg said.

“To have a successful relationship, it takes two people who are willing to put in the effort and who are willing to stick it out, even when it’s hard,” she said.

Spangenberg said the key ingredient to the program’s recipe of success is the satisfaction of the audience.

“I thought they had a lot of good things to say,” sophomore Ben Hall said.

While sophomore Anna Marie Landis agreed there was a lot of wisdom shared Monday, she also credited her upbringing for her understanding of relationships.

“I think my parents did a very good job of teaching me what a great relationship is like,” Landis said.

Next week, New Rules for Love and Dating will round off its series by focusing on new ways to look at sex and intimacy.

Nick Cocchiarella can be reached at cocc7813@stthomas.edu.