Author’s Note: This blog post has been expanded and clarified in my book Courtship in Crisis.
I grew up as a member of the homeschool community back when we were hiding from the cops and getting our textbooks from public school dumpsters. When I was a teenager, my friends started reading this new book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. For months we could talk of little else. After reading it myself, I grew into as big an opponent of dating as you could find. Dating was evil and Courtship, whatever it was, was godly, good and Biblical.
My grandparents would often ask why I wasn’t dating in high school. I explained what courtship was and quoted Joshua Harris, chapter and verse. Their response surprised me.
“I don’t think courtship is a smart idea,” my grandfather said.
“How can you tell who you want to marry if you aren’t going out on dates?” my grandmother wondered every time the topic came up. I tried to convince them but to no avail. They both obstinately held to the position that courtship was a foolish idea.
Well, what did they know? They were public schooled. I ignored their advice on relationships, preferring to listen to the young people around me who were passionate advocates of courtship.
As I grew older, I started to speak at homeschool conferences and events. I talked with homeschool parents, students and alumni all over the country and started to see some challenges with making courtship work.
Some of the specific challenges I identified were:
- Identification (Finding that other person)
- Interaction (Spending time with the other person)
- Initiation (Starting the relationship)
So I founded PracticalCourtship.com. Its purpose: to instigate a national conversation about how to make courtship more practical. Visits and comments poured in from all over the country about how to make courtship work and why it did not work.
Each year I waited for courtship to start working and for my homeschool friends to start getting married. It never happened. Most of them are still single. Some have grown bitter and jaded. Then couples who did get married through courtship started getting divorced. I’m talking the kind of couples who first kissed at their wedding were filing for divorce.
This was not the deal!
The deal was that if we put up with the rules and awkwardness of courtship now we could avoid the pain of divorce later. The whole point of courtship was to have a happy marriage, not a high divorce rate.
So I humbled myself and took my grandmother out for dinner to hear why she thought courtship was a bad idea all those years ago. She had predicted the failure of courtship back in the 90s and I wanted to understand how and why.
Now let me define what I mean by “courtship”.
So what is courtship anyway?
After 20 years there still is no general consensus as to what courtship is. But here are the elements most conservative communities have in common:
- The man must ask the woman’s father’s permission before pursuing the woman romantically.
- High accountability (chaperones, monitored correspondence, etc).
- Rules about physical contact and purity. (The specific rules vary from community to community).
- The purpose of the courtship is marriage
- High relational intentionality and intensity
- High parental involvement. Fathers typically hold a “permission and control” role rather than the traditional “advice and blessing” role held by their fathers.
The Case for Traditional Dating
My grandmother grew up in a marginally Christian community. People went to church on Sunday, but that was the extent of their religious activity. They were not the Bible-reading, small-grouping, mission-tripping Christian young people common in evangelical churches today.
And yet her community of friends all got married and then stayed married for decades and decades. So what on earth were they doing that worked so well? Over dinner, my grandmother shared her story about what dating was like back in the 30s and 40s.
When my grandmother dated in middle school (yes, middle school) her parents had one primary rule for her.
The Primary Dating Rule: Don’t go out with the same guy twice in a row.
So if she went out for soda with Bob on Tuesday, she had to go to a movie with Bill on Thursday before she could go to the school dance with Bob on Saturday.
That sounded crazy to me. So, I asked her the rationale behind it. She explained that the lack of exclusivity helped them guard their hearts and kept things from getting too serious too quickly. The lack of exclusivity kept the interactions fun and casual. “The guys wouldn’t even want to kiss you!” She said.
The lack of exclusivity helped the girls guard their hearts and kept the boys from feeling entitled to the girl. How could a boy have a claim to her time, heart or body if she was going out with someone else later that week?
She went on to explain that by the time she graduated from high school, she had gone out on dates with over 20 different guys. This meant that by the time she was 17 years old she knew which Bob she wanted to marry. They got married and stayed married till my grandfather passed away half a century later.
“If I had only gone out with 3 or 4 guys I wouldn’t have known what I wanted in a husband,” she said.
It is not that her parents were uninvolved; it is that they played an advisory role, particularly as she entered high school and they relaxed the rules about not going steady.
The Difference Between “Dating” and “Going Steady”
She went on to explain that there used to be a linguistic differentiation between “dating” and “going steady”. “Going steady” meant you were going out with the same person multiple times in a row. It often had symbols like the girl wearing the guy’s letter jacket. This telegraphed to everyone at school that she was “off the market” and that she had a “steady beau”.
It seems that my great grandparents’ rule forbidding my grandmother from going out with the same guy twice in a row was a common rule in those days.
The Greatest Generation was encouraged to date and discouraged from going steady while in middle school.
This is different from my generation, which is encouraged to “wait until you are ready to get married” before pursuing a romantic relationship. This advice, when combined with the fact that “the purpose of courtship is marriage”, makes asking a girl out for dinner the emotional equivalent of asking for her hand in marriage.
I am not convinced that anyone is ever truly ready to get married. Readiness can become a carrot on a stick, an ideal that can never be achieved. Marriage will always be a bit like jumping into a pool of cold water. A humble realization that you are not ready and in need of God’s help may be the more healthy way to start a marriage.
As the decades moved on, our language and behavior changed. We stopped using the phrase “going steady” and changed “dating” to mean “going steady”. For example, we would now say “John and Sarah have been dating for 3 months.” when the Greatest Generation would have said “John and Sarah have been going steady for 3 months.”
We then started using new pejoratives like “dating around” and “playing the field” to describe what used to just be called “dating”. Each decade added more exclusivity, intensity, and commitment to dating and saw a subsequent rise in temptation and promiscuity.
It is easier to justify promiscuity when you are exclusively committed to just one person, even if that commitment is only a week old.
In the late 80s and early 90s this promiscuous culture reached its peak. People would “go steady” for just a few weeks and then move on to the next relationship. It was this “hookup and breakup” culture that the founders of courtship were reacting to.
But their proposed solution involved adding even more commitment, exclusivity and intensity, the very things that lead to the problem in the first place. This is why courtship is fundamentally flawed.
The courtship movement eliminated dating and replaced it with nothing.
Or, put another way, they replaced dating with engagement. The only tangible difference between an engagement and a courtship is the ring and the date.
Similarities between Courtship & Engagement:
- They both require the permission of the father.
- They both are intended for marriage.
- They are not “broken up” but are instead “called off”.
- When they are called off there is an inevitable rending of a community as one of the couple no longer feel comfortable spending time with the community of their ex-future spouse.
Young people are expected to jump from interacting with each other in groups straight into “pseudo-engagement”. This is a jump very few are prepared to make. The result is that a commitment to courtship is often a commitment to lifelong singleness.
Why the Courtship Divorce Rate is So High
Recently I have seen a spike in divorces amongst couples who courted. I have a few theories as to why this is. Young people whose parents often maintain veto power on all of their decisions are then expected to make this most important decision without any experience in good decision making. They have no context of who they are, past decision making or an idea of what they are looking for in a spouse.
How can you know what personality you fit well with if you only go out with one other person? The result can be a mismatched couple and a marriage that is difficult to sustain.
Right now all we have little research to go on in terms of the courtship divorce rate. In my observations, some homeschool communities have a much higher divorce rate than others. I would be very interested in seeing some research on this phenomenon. This blog post is my call for more research on the divorce rate amongst couples who “courted” before getting married.
Advantages of Traditional Dating
Less Temptation – It is hard to fall in love with Bob on Tuesday when you know you are going out for coffee with Bill on Thursday. This lack of emotional commitment leads to less physical temptation. Less temptation leads to less compromise. I have no idea how women are supposed to guard their hearts while in an exclusive relationship with the purpose of marriage.
More Interaction – I know many homeschool girls who are frustrated that they never get asked out on a date. It is not uncommon to find a 21 year old stay at home daughter who has never been asked out on a date. The reason for this is not because the girl is unattractive (although that may be the story she convinces herself of over time).
The real reason is that few guys are willing to ask permission from a woman’s father to marry her before being able to ask her out on a date to get to know her. Even when this permission is requested, it is unlikely to be given.
I know several godly, hardworking and attractive homeschool guys who have been rejected by as many as a dozen fathers. I respect their tenacity. Getting turned down by courtship fathers is tough on guys because the fathers are rarely gentle or kind. So if you are a courtship-minded girl wondering why the guys are not calling, you may want to ask your dad how many guys he has run off.
With Traditional Dating, asking a girl out on a date is no big deal. All the guy is asking to do is to get to know the girl better. Maybe this leads to a deeper relationship, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, the interaction is easier and more fun when it is not so intense.
Less Heartbreak – One of the promises of courtship is that it can lead to less heartbreak than dating. I laugh at this to keep myself from crying. This could not be further from the truth. Calling off a courtship can be as emotionally wrenching as calling off an engagement. It can take years to recover from a “failed courtship.” Also let’s not also forget the emotional cost for girls of not being asked out year after year and the emotional cost for guys of being rejected by father after father.
More Marriage – Let’s face it, most married people got married because they dated first. I would even submit that most homeschoolers who do get married supplemented with dating at some point in their journey. Courtship is not resulting in many marriages despite having been advocated by (sometimes unmarried) conservative leaders for nearly 20 years.
More Fun – The institution of marriage is crumbling. Of the last two generations, one won’t get married and the other won’t stay married. A smaller percentage of people are married in America than at any other time. Part of what helps perpetuate the institution of marriage is making the process of getting married fun. My grandmother made dating in her day sound really fun. Courtship on the other hand can be awkward and emotionally heartwrenching.
Dating also trains people to continue dating their spouse after they get married. It is important for married couples to be able to have fun with each other. The kind of parents who are the strongest advocates of courtship are often the ones who go on the fewest dates with each other.
More Matchmaking – Modern Courtship doesn’t really have a mechanism for matchmaking. How can there be blind dates if the man must first get permission from a father? Courtship relationships are so intense that even introductions can be awkward. I know many happily married couples who met through a blind date or an online matchmaking service like eHarmony. Matchmaking is a time-tested practice that Traditional Dating is fully compatible with. Courtship? Not so much.
More League Awareness – Not everyone has the same level of attractiveness, character, intelligence and wealth. Parents tend to see their own children through rose-colored glasses. Homeschool communities can be a bit like Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average. It is easy for “no guy to be good enough for daddy’s little princess”. The sad result of enforcing this mindset is a daughter who becomes a spinster. With traditional dating guys learn their league by finding out what girls say “yes” to that second date. Girls learn their league by seeing what kind of guys ask them out.
Responding to Common Questions & Objections to Traditional Dating
Why Not Just Spend Time in Groups?
If you talk with advocates of modern courtship they speak highly of single people spending time in groups. Group settings reduce the intensity, commitment and exclusivity and thus protect the hearts of single people.
The problem with group settings is that not all personality types open up in group settings. Many married couples include one spouse who is more comfortable in group settings than the other. These couples may have never found each other if they were limited to “group dating.”
In group activities, it can be hard for the wallflowers to be discovered for the flowers that they really are. They need a less intense 1-on-1 setting in which to bloom. Group settings are particularly rough on women who grew up in communities where they were trained to value submissiveness, meekness and quietness.
The other challenge with group settings is that they are logistically complex. The more people you add to the group, the harder coordination becomes. Where is a stay-at-home daughter who attends a small family integrated church supposed to find groups of young people to hang out with? The result of limiting interaction to group settings is many lonely nights interacting with no one.
But Isn’t Courtship Biblical?
When applying Scripture, particularly the Old Testament, to our lives, it is important to differentiate between Biblical precedent, principle and precept. Just because Jacob had two wives and a seven-year engagement does not mean that God wants all men to have two wives and seven-year engagements.
What we have in the Old Testament is a lot of precedent: each story is different from the last.
For precedents we have:
- the woman as the protagonist in the romance (Ruth & Boaz)
- the man as the protagonist in the romance (Jacob & Rachel)
- the romance arranged by a third party (Isaac & Rebekah)
- the woman entering the man’s harem (David & Abigail, Micah, Bathsheba etc.)
There are some good Scriptural precepts about sexual purity in the New Testament, and there are some principles about the benefits of marrying young and that sort of thing.
But the Bible is surprisingly quiet when it comes to laying out a system of courtship. Courtship Systems are cultural, and the Bible rarely advocates one cultural approach over another. God’s heart is that every tribe and tongue come worship him without having to surrender their food, language or other cultural distinctives in the process.
Most of the moral arguments for courtship are actually arguments for arranged marriage. The arguments for the strong involvement of parents fit arranged marriage much better than they fit courtship.
When I started PracticalCourtship.com, one of my goals was to never use the site to criticize arranged marriage. In countries like India, that have both arranged marriages and “love marriages,” the arranged marriages have the lower divorce rate. Arranged marriage has been used by many cultures for many years with good results.
The problem is that arranged marriage is not a good fit for western culture. Many Americans value individual liberty more than life itself. Giving this most important decision to someone else is not something many of us are comfortable with. Also, parents are often hesitant to arrange marriages lest their child resent them if the marriage turns out to be an unhappy one.
I don’t see Arranged Marriage taking off in Western Culture.
We need a system to help young people make good decisions. Fortunately, we have one: Traditional Dating.
Traditional Dating fits our culture like a glove. Most of Americans already intuitively know how it works because it is part of who we are as a people. If you don’t know how it works, ask your grandparents and they will tell you of the glory days when men were free. Watch the twinkle in their eye when they tell you of a time when men and women could fall in love and pick their own spouses.
Hasn’t Our Sexualized Culture Ruined Dating?
There is no denying that the media is far more sexually charged than it was when my grandparents were dating in junior high. Now while some of that is the media following culture (The Beatles sang about hand holding while hippies swapped STDs in the 60s), I do believe that media affects the culture. The question is how do we best respond to that culture.
The commitment, exclusivity and intensity of dating is what lead to temptation and compromise in the first place. Courtship makes the problem worse by increasing the commitment which intensifies the temptation. The advocates of courtship know this, which is why chaperones are so critical to the system.
The other problem with courtship is that it often delays marriage. Courtship communities expect young people to live celibate lives in a sexually charged culture for a decade or more before they get married. The Bible instructs us to flee temptation and to marry lest you burn with lust. Courtship teaches instead to delay marriage until you are ready.
I recently heard a local pastor complaining about a rash of older 20 something women in his church who had given up on finding prince charming. They started making physical compromises in an effort to attract a man. Once they gave up on courtship they just grabbed whatever the world was offering.
The benefit of traditional dating is that the lack of exclusivity reduces temptation. It also helps young people find out who they are and who they are looking for faster. Early marriage reduces the number of years a young person must resist sexual temptation through celibacy.
Finally, I should say this: Where sin abounds, grace abounds more. I understand Grace to be the power of God to do the will of God. The power of God is greater than the power of our sexualized culture. There is nothing new under the sun and no new temptation that is not already common to man. This is not the first time Christians have lived in a sexualized culture.
If you study history, you will find that this actually happens often. In each of those generations God provided a way out. I believe that for our generation that way is Traditional Dating.
Now Let’s Talk Some Specifics
Suggestions For Single Women
If you are a single woman, realize that the reason guys are not asking you out is NOT because you are unattractive. It is because you live in a system where he must want to marry you before he can get to know you. It is the system that is broken, not you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Somewhere out there is a guy who will see you as the most beautiful woman in the world. The more guys you meet, the faster you will find him.
- If a Christian guy asks you out for dinner, say “yes”. You don’t need to love him to say yes to a first date.
- Be friendly. Give the guy hope that he has a chance with you. Coyness is not as attractive as the media makes it out to be.
- Don’t make him run a gauntlet before he can get to know you. Realize he is not asking to marry you when he asks if he can buy you dinner.
- Some guys are hidden gems and are more than meets the eye. Give him a chance to win your attention and to earn that second date.
- If you are not interested in a guy, let him down gently. There is a way to give a firm “no” to a guy without making him feel like a worm.
- Don’t call in your dad to scare him off unless he won’t take the hint. Your dad and his shotgun should be the last resort.
- Let the guy pay for dinner.
Suggestions for Single Men
- Start asking girls out. Most girls would love to be asked out and will say “yes” if you would just ask them.
- Realize that asking a girl out for dinner is not the same as proposing marriage.
- If she says you need to talk to her dad first, take the “no” for what it is and move on to the next woman. For a better explanation of this point see 7 Reasons I Recommend Avoiding Dragon Guarded Women.
- If you have been browbeaten by harsh courtship fathers, I feel your pain. Ask God to heal your heart and to give you the courage to try again. The tide is shifting. The leaders that those men used to justify their actions are quickly fading into the past. We are entering a kinder, gentler age. Who knows. Maybe the next girl you ask out could be the one.
- Get a job. Money makes you more attractive.
- Pay for dinner.
Suggestions for Both Single Men and Single Women
- Do what your grandparents did and go out on dates with lots of different people before going steady with any of them.
- Don’t marry the first person you have feelings for.
- Keep an eye out for public places where you can have private conversations.
- Find a church with lots of single people. There are still churches out there with a healthy culture of traditional dating. If no one in your church got married last year, don’t expect to break that trend. You can always move back to your parent’s church after you find your sweetheart.
- Have fun.
- Fear God.
Suggestions For Parents
- Try to make marriage attractive to your children by loving and respecting your spouse the best you can. One reason that your children may not be getting married is because they don’t want what you have in your marriage.
- Start dating your spouse again. Do whatever you can to make your marriage a happy one.
- Encourage your sons to ask girls out on dates.
- Allow your daughters to say yes to first dates from Christian guys you don’t know.
- As your children become adults, give advice instead of commands. Being a parent does not make you a Pope for another adult.
- The gentler you are in giving advice, the more it will be sought.
- Take a step back and trust God to guide your child directly.
- Pray earnestly and persistently for your child.
- Encourage your children to find their way to places where they can meet other single people.
- Don’t force your daughters to stay at home. Let them get out into the world where they can meet godly men. If you want to catch a fish you must first walk to the pond.
- Remember that gentleness and kindness are fruits of the Spirit.
- Treat the person interested in your child as a fellow brother or sister in Christ.
How to Talk With Your Folks About Courtship
Share this post with your parents and talk to with them about why courtship is flawed and why you are going to start going out on dates.
The older you are, the easier this conversation will be. I find that even the most controlling parents start to mellow out as their single daughters start entering their 30s. That biological clock waits for no man, even Prince Charming. It will help when their friends start bragging about their grandchildren.
Listen to them as they share the mistakes they made while dating. Listen to their story of how they fell in love. Just remember that every romance is different and your story will be different. Just because your parents got divorced or live in an unhappy marriage does not doom you to their fate.
Realize that many of their rules were created out of fear. They are afraid that you will suffer the same way they did when they were your age.
Don’t forget that they love you. Explain to them that you all want the same thing: for you to be happily married.
Explain that courtship is not helping you become happily married. Courtship leads to singleness more often than it leads to marriage.
If all else fails, play the grandchildren card. Most parents want grandchildren. Try to explain that if they want grandchildren you need to get married and courtship is not helping you do that.
Where do we go from here?
Share this post with your community on Facebook and Google+ to continue the conversation. My hope is that as single people start embracing traditional dating we can restore the fun first date to our culture. The more people who read this post the more guys that will start asking girls out and the more girls who will say “yes” to that first date.
Tweetables:
- The Greatest Generation was encouraged to date and discouraged from going steady in middle school. (Click to Tweet)
- The courtship movement eliminated dating and replaced it with nothing. (Click to Tweet)
- The only tangible difference between an engagement and a courtship is the ring and the date. (Click to Tweet)
- A commitment to courtship is often a commitment to lifelong singleness. (Click to Tweet)
- Most of the moral arguments for courtship are actually arguments for arranged marriage. (Click to Tweet)
- Being a parent does not make you a Pope for another adult. (Click to Tweet)
- The benefit of traditional dating is that the lack of exclusivity reduces temptation. (Click to Tweet)
- When applying Scripture, it is important to differentiate between precedent, principle and precept. (Click to Tweet)
What do you think?
If I have learned one thing running PracticalCourtship.com, it is that courtship is very controversial. Even the definition of the word sparks a debate. That is fine. I am happy to see your thoughts and opinions in the comments. A few requests for the comments:
- Keep the conversation civil. No name calling. Just because you were hurt in the past is no excuse to hurt others in the future.
- Keep the conversation humble. Bragging about how this is not a problem in your family is not very helpful.
- Please read the follow up article before posting comments. I may have already addressed your question in the Q&A post.
- I reserve the right to delete comments. It is not censorship to take your comment off of my personal blog. Remember you can say whatever you want about me or this post on your own blog or Facebook page.
If you think that this post should be expanded into a book to respond to some of the concerns posted below, click here, to get book updates.
This post has turned into a book!
Thank you to everyone who backed Courtship in Crisis on Kickstarter. You can now find the book on Amazon.
Yes, I would love to see this article expanded into a book! Valuable information here! I would also love to see a condensed form of this article that hits the main points, for sharing with those less inclined to explore this topic. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective.
I’m 55 and married 30 yrs and have one son aged 18 who’s in Europe on a gap year before Uni.
I wasn’t a Christian but came to faith in my mid 30’s, though my wife was non practicing and came back to an active faith as I became involved.
To be frank I was a notch on the belt guy and thought I was a Christian by birth/culture etc, which I later found out was seriously wrong :-).
That being said I never went after women who were married or engaged, my paradigm in this regard was largely taken on from my father and step mum.
As I’ve moved through the various stages of our marriage I have realised more and more how blessed I have been with my wife and family and have mused on many occasions at why relationships break down. I am in love with my wife as much today than I was at first and I know it is deeper based on the appreciation of who she is and what she stands for as well as the history you have over a long period, the ups and downs, the crisis’s and the fun, almost untouchable times too.
That said this article touched a cord deep in me as I have advised/assisted and intervened several times for and with couples of different ages and stages over the years, not withstanding the prayers at all hours.
Genesis 2:24/25 shows an image of a man and woman being glued together (in all the realms they exist in) as God’s choice for marriage and society and Children and Grand Children.
This is not easy, it is an ebb and flow thing and dare I say it over a period you will meet other women or men to whom you are attracted and some of them will make a move or clear the decks so you can.
Often I have seen it is a situational thing or acting from a damaged place to recapture something.
I like the grandmothers idea of loose dating (but it has to have a clear boundary on physicality), it’s friendships really with a possible smooch (guys are results driven).
The thing is courtship as I read it, is saying this is leading to marriage so there is no other reason to be on this track. That may work for the Amish but Western civilisation, nah.
Whereas dating with no looking to that end, means you will meet more people and if you are clear to yourself what your boundaries are you will be able to see the “heart value” of a guy (which maybe age&stage) and whether you want to allow him more into your life.
Gen 22/24/25 shows the end in mind.
There are pathways to that and the reality is no one knows what marriage is until they are in it.
Picture two people as two countries with a border post, with many booths with red yellow and green lights above the entrances.
In terms of a marriage each booth is a different area/part of your life together and would cover discipline of children, savings, retirement, sexual life, money management, neighbourliness, study, career staging, etc etc (literally dozens and dozens of them).
Think from your side towards your spouse/friend, the light is either red – don’t go there, yellow – move with caution, green – easy movement and entry.
God’s aim for you and Him is green on them all both ways and for you and your spouse together with Him.
So forth from your spouces side to you and Him and both of you with Him.
I once built a lego representation of this, to put into a video to a nephew overseas who was getting married which we sent to them instead of a telegraph.
Courtship is flawed I think as it sets in stone the parameters of a relationship when it doesn’t have to be.
We need to explore all the booths and what they mean for us and the same for our future partners.
Necessarily some booths don’t get brought up at the first “date” either!
I have been blessed and sincerely hope all reading this will be too, life is too short to not be and you deserve the best.
Be well Mike
I too am of the homeschool community. I went to private school up until I started middle school. I didn’t think much about courtship cuz well, I didn’t really think about guys that much throughout high school. Many guys are not date material in high school and I was well aware of that. Now as a senior in a liberal college and 21, I still have not really “dated”. There was that one weird “it’s for school” movie which turned into “lets have dinner too” which felt so much like a date that I was uncomfortable but lets not count that. I just want girls to be aware it may take a while to even get asked out by a NORMAL Christian guy whom with you wouldn’t mind going on a “traditional date”. I have so often been accused of being stand-offish when really I’m a little picky about who buys me dinner. I’ve been asked out several times. But it’s generally been more like “What are you doing Saturday? I’ll buy the drinks.” And staying true to my conservative values, have turned them down. BUT even the Christian guys that have asked me out so far are kinda creepy guys. Just want to let other girls out there know it may take a bit for a semi-normal Christian guy to ask you out… and that’s okay. And how are we supposed to let a guy down gently without making him feel like a worm? Even today, I stopped communicating with a guy because I’m not interested and I know where he’s going with this. But I can’t even be civil. If I say, “Hello, how are you?”, the guys seem to to suddenly think “She cares!” (the ones I’ve seen) Besides, I wonder if the author of this article is completely anti-courtship. Could it work for some families??
Excellent, excellent, excellent! Yes, *please* write a book. I am now happily married, but I wish I had read this when I was a student. I think I will ask my grandparents about their experience dating.
May I suggest that additionally, you address our hookup culture and female initiation of relationships in your forthcoming book? While raised in a fundamentalist/Gothard-influenced environment, I have gradually become a passionate egalitarian. The only point of disagreement I have with your article is that the man should always pay for dinner. I would like to see some convincing justification for that advice. And the existence of our hookup culture changes the effectiveness of the “don’t go steady” advice a bit. But I think that deep down most people know how empty a one night stand is and crave lasting relationship.
Recommended reading related to your book project: Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz and First Comes Marriage: Modern Relationship Advice from the Wisdom of Arranged Marriages by Reva Seth
Blessings and thank you for an excellent article!
I’m a little late to join the party here, but I felt that I might shed some light on the Hebrew ideas of adulthood. It was my understanding that at the age of 13, boys were concidered men and girls were women. They could marry, be held accountable for sins and therefore make their own sacrifice. The age of 30 was when men were concidered old enough to be allowed to speak as an elder at councils and meetings. Just like when we all turned 18, we are concidered a legal adult. But we can’t drink or buy alcohol until 21. We also can’t run for senate until 25 or president until 35. A person is no less adult, it was just the accepted age of maturity. I hope this helps.
I don’t remember Joshua describing courtship the way you do in this post. For instance I don’t think he taught this “It is because you live in a system where he must want to marry you before he can get to know you.” I think his view was more be friends first rather than be romantic. The divorce rate is high everywhere especially among people who live together first. I wouldn’t define courtship the way you did. To me courtship happens after you get to know the person as a friend and than you enter into a deeper relationship with the idea this could be the one. Your “dates” are geared around doing things that will help you know each other in a family setting.
Did you read his second book by chance “When Boy Meets Girl” I didn’t but many people said I should. Maybe your view wouldn’t have been the way it is if you read that book.
There are some great points here and others that I must give the benefit of the doubt to and assume they reflect the truth of what the author has witnessed or experienced. But there are also some fairly large flaws here, some of which are even in the suggestions for how to move forward. There is no great truth or wisdom that can be attributed to what we often hear termed “the greatest generation” and their cultural paradigms for dating are no more accepted or a good fit with modern culture than courtship is. The fact is that while it is fair to esteem them in general and to specifically credit them with growing up in a culture that held an overarching set of values and beliefs that fit with staying married, valuing family, and fixing what was broken and then to a decent extent staying married and doing amazing things; it is also fair to credit them with raising a generation that created championed and participated in the sexual revolution and many other vile things. Their children got divorced at astronomical rates not because mom and dad were so wise and taught them so well but more specifically because mom and dad failed in that duty. Obviously there are many exceptions just as there are many exception in my generation to the rule of sleeping around a lot, doing drugs and rejecting God completely. But the generality is fair and valid as generalities go.
Children of the greatest generation who sinned and sinned and sinned and purposefully turned an entire culture upside down in order to encourage more sin are culpable before God for their evil actions so long as any of them remain determined to live apart from God’s grace. Similarly, parents of the seventies and eighties are culpable for doing a poor job turning that around, for allowing me and my friends to be immersed in the culture for 40 or more hours a week and pretending that wasn’t having a terrible effect on us OR for some for trying to do better but apparently according to what you saw in your circles actually doing a shockingly bad job of helping their children navigate courtship successfully, if in fact your picture has any accuracy. But at the same time The children in each of these pictures are culpable for their own adult decisions. People who did not care for their marriage along the way or who got divorced for whatever wrong reason are culpable as adults for their own sins. And in the future I will be culpable for whether I do evil or good as a parent and my kids will still be culpable for their own decision and whether they do evil or good in their roles in marriage.
For my part being a homeschooling parent for 14 years now, not particularly involved in local groups but very involved in email groups and groups that travel and at church with home-schoolers and public-schoolers alike I’ve seen many marriages and no divorces and no unhappy-lonely-left-out-of-the-loop folks who seem to resent their lives, well maybe a couple but they were both public-schooled and did not have courtship thrust upon them. I’ve even participated in the situation and introduced one couple that later ended up married and now are still happily married more than 10 years later with two beautiful daughters who bring so much joy.
I don’t think there is a clear cut thing going on here and I wonder if maybe the wisdom is more in allowing ourselves to consider and adopt parts of the model and discuss the hows and whys with our kids in a way that truly prepares them for their future decisions, which essentially what I think I see the most often among the people I know who seem to have rejected dating either completely or partially.
I can’t help but think that the real problems I see shouting out to me throughout this article are parents who held their kids under their thumbs and never taught them to think or to understand why they believed as they did. Or perhaps they had some serious correction to make in what they believed and understood about God. This is not a problem unique to home-schoolers nor to those advocating for the courtship model. I saw a good bit of the fallout of that type of parenting when I was a teenager who had never heard of homeschooling or courthship and a good deal more when I was a young adult who had finally heard of one of the above but knew next to no one involved in it. Good parents must understand and accept that their children will someday be accountable to God for adult decisions not for how well their father controlled them with his steel toed boots. As children grow if they are not learning how to make decisions and choose what they believe then they are not being raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And I have continued to see plenty of backlash, unbelief and divorce from the ungodly adult children that grew up in that type of situation and even among those who grew up with it and married others who grew up with it but still managed to find the right path to repentance and a real relationship with God despite their parents and their spouse.
Really courtship is fundamentally flawed, in the similar ways and for the same reasons that humanity is flawed and the author’s grandmother’s praise of trying out lots of folks to see if they float your boat is flawed….not to mention the grandmother’s and the author’s assertion that people in that scenario were sufficiently prevented from getting emotionally entangled or passionately intense. If you talk to enough people from any given era you will hear the downside of every human way of handling these things, the sins that were committed, the philosophies and assertions that proved unreliable and the resentful bitter people who Satan used to turn others against any part of it that truly was good and wise.
I absolutely love this. I am now a high school Senior and have come from a family that, though not blunt enough to outright say dating is not allowed, strongly implied discouragement towards dating. As a middleschooler I was actually even made to read Joshua Harris’s “I kissed Dating Goodbye” and my father taught a class over the book which caused me to “[grow] into as big an opponent of dating as you could find.” I kept this mindset up until just recently when I finally found a girl who I believe I can marry in the future. I see now that this qualification, that I can see myself marrying her, is a direct repercussion of all those “dating” classes that I was taught in middleschool. I hated dating. I hated seeing what it did and does to my friends, and I still kinda do. There are so many people who to them, dating is the “Hookup and Breakup” mentality (even though my crowd is mostly just ‘hangout and breakup’) and I think that scared me away from dating. But now I finally have this relationship that I realize I have placed so much stress on. I have unconsciously expected to marry her and she knows that. I never intended to follow the rules of courtship yet I have still followed them pretty close just because that is what I have always known.
The other problem is that I don’t want to date around. I realize that this not an advice column but this page has brought up some questions I can’t answer. What do you do when you have placed so much expectation on a relationship? It’s not like I can take back any expectations I have already placed without hurting her, is it?
Well I just want to say that if a book comes out, I’m definitely buying it. This is one of the most useful and thought provoking internet links I’ve clicked in a very long time.
My advice (as a mom who has one married son age 23 and two teenage daughters) is that if you are very unsure of your intention to marry this girl then you need to be honest with yourself and with her about that. But please take time to pray and meditate before you make up your mind on the issue.
It seems to me that one possible reason you are suddenly doubting the situation is that you are still young and unestablished as an adult man and that being under the pressure of an expectation to marry is really just an unfair thing to do to yourself and to the young lady. (I’ve encouraged my kids to avoid allowing themselves to become emotionally entangled while they are yet to young to do anything about it while acknowledging that it may happen anyway and encouraging them to be open about it if such a situation does develop.) This may be your first time to step up as a man who may lead a household one day and do the right thing for yourself and for another human being. You may be able to gently let her know that the two of you need to back off of that expectation and focus on being two single people encouraging each other to serve God and possibly developing a friendship. It may or may not go as well as you will hope for it to go, but it may still be the right thing to do. And it may or may not lead to you and she being married at some point later after maturing as individuals and in the relationship, but it will certainly be a part of you maturing into the man you will be and the type of husband you will be someday.
BTW, right now my teen girls hate the dating they see going on around them too. It is a perfectly normal response to watching your friends hurting, or watching them hurting other people. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never be in a situation where something akin to dating may be the way to go, it just means that you have the wisdom to see the flaws in that plan as it is so very commonly going badly all around us day in and day out.
Step 1: Realize a certain female exists
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Decide you want to marry this girl
Step 4: Ask Girl’s father that you want to court this girl with the intention of getting married.
Step 5-856: Do all the stuff necessary to please her parents and convince them you deserve to marry marry the girl
Step 857: Get married
Oh yeah and you may also want to fall in love somewhere in there. But it’s not a necessary step.
great article! i’ve always felt uncomfortable about endorsing or joining the “courtship culture” and now i think i know why. thanks!
I really like your article. One of the things I did, as newby homeschooling mom, was the herd mentality. I assumed that if the homeschooling community was touting courting then it must be the thing to do. Wrong on so many levels. First and most important I wasn’t listening to the Spirit, I was following man. When we raise our children to love the Lord we know that He will guide them. Then we can step back and know, mistakes and all, that God will use every circumstance to his Glory.
The success of traditional dating in today’s society would require young men (and women) to have the same pure intentions as they did years ago. Our culture is so highly sexualized, I doubt it would be possible for today’s teens to approach dating on the same plane as in our grandparent’s day. This includes most youth groups, unfortunately. In a group of Christian teens, you’d be surprised at the level of sexual activity they are involved in or battle against. I don’t think kids should date until they are mature enough to make good decisions! My kids aren’t there yet, but we are on the cusp. We will be more on the courtship side of the equation. Many years in youth ministry has taught us that dating is not worth it.
I agree with your comments completely. After having been through 2 abusive marriages because I was raised to follow a very similar pattern, I can see a few of the reasons why I may have lacked insight. Thanks for writing on a sensitive but important topic.
I thank you for your honesty and depth of research. But I do disagree whole heartedly. First dating, co habitation, courtship, and arranged marriages are all a subject that all have there sgare on the divorce rate.
The main issue is what is the purpose of marriage? If you see the purpose as your own self fullfillment then dating is going to fit. But if you see marriage as the institution created by god to express to a world his glory, long suffering love, his forgiveness, mercy and grace to the lost. Then it doesnt matter.
You nailed it more then which one is right or better. And that is the western cultures love for self. Its passion for being an individual.
I know many people in the dating scene who never get out because they dont k ow how to commit.
We leave our churches. Our families our jobs our spouse when we arent happy or fullfilled. Back in the day during grandmothers time thats not how it was. So you can not use thay season of life to this one. Because this age doesnt commit. Which is why more couple co habitate. Yet there is still the same result.
I believe in courtship. Which leads to the second issue. Its not done correctly. Parents dont know how to leave the controling stage to the guiding stage. I disagree witb a persons comment that lack of trust in adult daughter. The wisdom I teach my children is counsel from the older. Foolishness is young adults still experiencing life thinking they know everything. When seeking your father and mothers wisdom will lead to happier and more fullfilling lives.
But parents need to grasp they are responsible for their children until they leave the home. Permission is good!! Wise!! Honorable!! And respectable. So whats that say about our future young men? Thats scarey for a dad. My daughters are important to me. Loved. And cared for. I desire the very best for them. So I guide them. And yes protect them. But also teach them til death do you part. Plus my desire and hope is that the person will be from our church or in our community of believers that hold these same principles.
Thank you so much for your intellectually honest review of courting in America. There are few proponents of this system who are willing to treat it with the grace and candor that you have shown. From someone who has been on the receiving end of these issues, I am most grateful. When you are ready to turn this into a book I would be more than willing to offer constructive feedback, before it’s sent to print, or, if you would like to contact me, I’d be more than happy to share with you my own testimonial experience with the courting system in America. God bless, brother!
I wish that this could have been said in my younger years, as in 21-49 years old. I have had it with the Christian culture stating that Christians can’t go to church to find a husband or wife; or the whole group courtship idea. I am a single woman because of many of the practices that you have stated above. I am thankful that the Lord has blessed me with an amazing life, and I enjoy being single. Yet, I was made to feel guilty for simply just wanting to go on dates with many different Christian men to see what kinds of people I got along with, and to determine if our values were in sync. I think many men were given the same conflicting ideas about dating. Please publish this to the above 42 year old crowd. We need to hear it, too!
I could not agree more. The first time I read that book I thought it was insane!! Mostly because after high school and for sure after college no one hangs out in groups so it would be hard to meet people and plus its an insane amount of pressure!,,
I’d like to propose a theory for why the author is seeing a high divorce rate among “Courtship” couples: maybe it’s not the method that is flawed, although I definitely see some of that. But I think the bigger problem is that those people got attached to a “formula”. Humans love formulas – they make us feel secure. Anytime though that we place our security and trust in a formula, we are in dangerous territory. Relationships are messy no matter what “formula” you choose to get there. There are no shortcuts, no recipes to escape hurt and pain and failure. There are some good ideas that go along with the “courtship” method and some good ideas behind dating. What I hear from the wise grandparents in this story is: don’t take it all so seriously. Lighten up and don’t be on some spiritual high-horse. Such wisdom. This is why I love old people. They help us young folks to keep it real.
I think you should name your book “Why I Kissed Courtship Goodbye”
There is already a book on this called ” I gave dating a chance”.
Wow. As someone who has been burned by courtship, I can honestly say I like this idea. While I do believe God had an ultimate plan for that courtship (i.e. He revealed to me after the “break-up” that he didn’t want me to get married until I had spent a few year’s on the mission field.), I wonder what life would be like now if I had done some traditional dating. I do know this. As my time on the mission field comes to a close, I feel him calling me more and more strongly to marriage and family. To be perfectly honest, my goal when I get home is to get married and start in on a family. Maybe it’s time to give traditional dating a try.
Look, this article is beautiful ammunition for a person hurt by a bad courtship, or a parent who needs an answer to why their 30 year old son or daughter is single, but it’s with a righteous anger that I have to call it, for lack of a better word, **** ****.
This article is dust because it has nothing to do with my relationship with Christ.
Let’s talk marriage, a beautiful sacred covenant created by God in order for two people to work side by side, become one, and be helpers of each other. Here’s where Satan is currently weaving that in our culture today – We spend our time doing the opposite of helping our peers and children. In fact, we hinder them.
To biblically and spiritually help someone is to point them, encourage them, and correct them in their walk with Christ. NOT to get them to find a good marriage.
Help people walk closer with Christ, and then allow Christ to speak to them on where their wonderful and life-long spouse is.
Help me to trust God’s timing, that’s where I need help. I don’t need any help with my dating habits.
I agreed with many of your sentiments and insights back in the 90s..but I was “rebellious” and not-as-spiritual amongst my courting-advocate friends for it! I am all for a Christ-centered approach to dating–after all, if we cannot learn to bring our thoughts captive to Christ, if we are uncontrollable beasts when with the opposite sex, then what separates us from animals? I would like to add one piece of advice to single women when dating–you are in control! You control how far things go physically, so honor your date (especially if you want to “go steady”) and don’t dress, act or talk in a way that makes his effort at sexual purity with you more difficult than it already is, you gorgeous girl, you. 🙂