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.
Courtship vs Dating, this is an argument/discussion I have heard repeatedly throughout my homeschool community. Honestly I like some of the points you brought up, but I do think you a missing one point. You did go over how God doesn’t give us “courtship rules” and that is really silent on this subject. Honestly I think it’s for a reason. It’s not important how you meet your spouse. What’s important is that you trust God. I believe the whole idea of “finding a spouse” is really limiting. It puts the control in our hands. Who is more capable of leading us to a love commitment, humanity or the Divine? Actually the clearest example of courtship in the Bible is Issac and Rebecca. The method included Abraham sending a servant to find a righteous woman. God then uses camels and water jugs to confirm the woman for Issac. Should we all walk around with camels and ask God to send us someone to water them?! We cannot systematize meeting a loving spouse. What we can do is seek God and trust Him with every part of our lives, including our love lives. We do not need a camel to ask God to reveal who to give our heart to.
I think this is a really well written piece. My only criticism is why “Let the guy pay for dinner?” I’m not actually saying that it is wrong for a guy to pay for dinner. But almost everything else you said in the article had some thought out reason. “Let him pay” seemed arbitrary, and in this culture, many women are working and making money, it seems to me that while there might be a reason to “Let him pay,” it needs to be a better reason than “He’s the man.” When I was “going steady” with my now husband, he made more money than I did and so he paid most of the time. Now I make more money, so we are usually using the money I earned to pay. It seems to me if the tables had been turned, and I had been making more money, it would have been silly and selfish of me to make him pay.
PLEASE write a book!!!!! I’ve just been mind blown but this makes so much more sense. I’m a 16 year old girl who has never been on a date and I’m glad I read this before I got any older because although I’ve always been very strict about this stuff I’ve also always been really confused. THANK YOU!
First Part = LISTEN TO ME, I AM CREDIBLE. I WAS HOMESCHOOLED. I SPOKE AT CONFERENCES. ME ME ME ME ME. After I read Part 1, the framework was ‘me centered’ and how I feel. Also, how many people does she know? Over a million. Because she witnesses a handful of cases of divorce following this model means nothing to me. STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT.
Second Part = Creating confusion on what courtship is. Fuzz up the situation. Create a cloud or a Pandora’s box to make it sound like ‘we don’t know what courtship is’. Offset it by spitting out ‘perceived wrongs’.
Third Part = GRANDMA = GOD? Framework should focus on *Marginally Christian community. Enough said. She is in the same boat, therefore her great grandparents and her grandma must set the standard for all peoples in the world (because this is what she said…) <- Sarcasm. I'm not going to read the rest of this garbage. Look at the bottom banner, they want to write a book to sell to the sheeple.
If she wanted credibility, she would cite scripture. Yes she talks about the old testament relationships, but we should understand that God used messed up people, murderers, prostitutes, polygamists, adulterers etc. God did not say that this was right. Just because it is a story in a bible, does not mean that God was approving of their relationships.
Never use the bible to tell your story, then you missed the boat and hit your head on the deck and fell in the water and drowned <- sorry for the run on sentence, but it was funny.
Last part: 'suggestions' PUAHAHAHAHA. PEOPLE *CHRISTIANS wake up. Read your bibles and figure out that the enemy comes to kill, steal and destroy. There is one that offers life when you aren't fooled. She has no biblical basis for anything she is talking about. She is just talking about ideas, experiences, and feelings. *I'm out now. Sorry for the rant.
She is also a guy so…
You obviously didn’t even read the post. You refer to the author as “she” over and over. I am an almost 60 year old father of three who were raised in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I sincerely believe that this prevalent philosophy in the church has contributed to many many young evangelicals not enjoying God’s best for them of finding a help mate in their lives. Stop and think about what you are saying and how you are saying it. Your post sounds like a rant.
My personal opinion is that many of us get much too caught up in the “lingo”, the words. Courting, dating, casual dating, traditional dating, etc, etc, and many times each of those words means something different to different people. So, I don’t think we should get caught up in what “word” a person is using in reference to their romantic life (or getting to know the opposite sex, whatever you want to refer to it as). It’s going to have to be explained what you mean by that at some point anyway. It sounds to me like this article is a specific to response to some of the courting theories held by some home school communities. I personally went through a courtship and have been happily married for almost 10 years, and it seems that my interpretation of this word and the author’s are not the same, so it’s not the “word” that is bad or wrong. No matter the words you use, if a couple ends up getting married, every marriage is going to take hard work if it is going to last. There are things you can do prior to marriage that make working those issues out easier, but there’s no method in the world that will give a person a “free ride” or the easy life once the marriage is official.
I do believe that any type of dating should be intentional in its efforts, and that intention at the beginning may just be to get to know the other person. I also believe that this is many times most effectively done with others at the very beginning (i.e. double-dating), and that talking things through with wise council (whether it be parents or trusted leaders) helps a person to stay accountable and helps a person examine their own heart to see if they should pursue that relationship on a deeper level or not. And lastly, I do believe that once a person has decided to pursue a relationship, it is helpful to set some guidelines for yourself (whether you and the person you’re courting/dating set that or someone helps you). It’s not about having someone else in charge of your life, it’s about keeping ourselves accountable, because the Bible does say, “Our hearts are deceitfully wicked”. Sometimes we don’t want to look at our own hearts and evaluate our emotions, motives and actions and we need others to help us do that, especially when it involves something that could lead to marriage; one of the most precious gifts God has given us.
So, if you call that courting or dating or traditional dating, that’s all up to you. This article mentioned that arranged marriages just won’t work for Western culture in her opinion, and that some of the examples in the Bible provide principles but the exact way it was played out doesn’t translate exactly to our culture (is irrelevant). Her answer of “traditional dating” presents the exact same problem. When the majority of Western Americans hear the term “dating”, they don’t think of it in the same terms as her grandmother’s traditional dating experience. Throwing out the word “courting” isn’t going to fix anything, or change American culture, or stop the high divorce rate, or stop pre-marital sex, but following God and living out a successful marriage as a good example to the community and those around you can help change some of those things one person at a time, no matter what label you put on it.
You have failed to prove a causal relationship between courtship and bad relationships!
I am not an advocate of courtship or any particular dating “method”.
The reason granny had a good marriage is that the men were more mature and had better examples “back then.” It has nothing to do with dating methods!!!
I know many who have dated a lot of people, but it didn’t help their choice of marriage partner. It’s the character of the PERSON getting married which determines marriage success, NOT the dating method. BOTH must have high character to succeed.
Oh really? Please by all means explain your experience back in granny’s days and now and how men have changed. As Solomon said “there is nothing new under the sun.”
If the method for getting married is 100% insignificant than why don’t we just pick random people?
Because as you said it’s about the people involved. If both are good Godly folk then it will work.
But how does someone find a good Godly person? THAT is what the issue is. And that is how you analyze a system. If it allows for Godly folk to find each other easier. And taking the first guy who is able to lie his way past your dad (e.g. courtship) is not the best system.
I remember that as a man looking for a wife in the 90’s, I wanted a girl who was out of her parent’s house and still a Christian. Even back in the 80’s, I had friends who found that the girl they married was different after she was out from under her parents authority. All discussion can be helpful and this hit several of the needed points head on. Thanks.
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So true, my mom made me read 10 Christian dating books (Like Waiting, Dating, and Choosing a Mate, Too Close too Soon, and Josh McDowell’s Why Wait) before I could date at 16 (when all I wanted to do was go to a basketball game with Kevin because he asked me and I didn’t even really know or like him). Reading the books, precursers to I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which came out my freshman year of college and my mother bought for my birthday, I totally idealized courtship. I bought into being too focused on finding a mate verses finding fun and learning to relate. My fiance and I wore matching “I’m Not Doing It” T-shirts from Josh McDowells Why Wait Seminars. I bought into exclusive dating too young and hadn’t planned to marry until 27 after I finished college, taught five years and bought a house. My first boyfriend asked me to marry him at 20 with a card on video in front of my parents saying, “Will you marry me, I asked your mom and she said yes, so you better say “Yes.” Waiting for the wedding night was over-rated. The 20 year marriage was done with sheer grit and willpower–not love– and divorce was the best thing that ever happened to it all. My parents had seen my years of loneliness and were supportive since there were 7 biblical grounds according to John Frame’s Biblical Ethics. So finally at 40 I began dating like I should have about 14 and got to experience what love is. I am glad I was a “strong-willed” type not afraid to divorce and disappoint the Christian expectations of my parents. Many suffer in silence trying to submit and be the perfect wife or worse — my sweet Christian pastor’s wife aunt left seven children motherless taking her life because the anguish and loneliness of incompatability and the pressures of pleasing the Christian Community with Biblical Self Discipline and Excellent Wive giving up your innate basic needs so impossible. We are all imperfect sinners and it’s just good to crawl in bed at night with someone who chemically is crazy about you no matter what because you haven’t done right just because they just click with you– you have to find that one who it is just easy to love for you– natural. I shouldn’t be such hard work all the time because you married someone your parents and everyone else thought was good for you even when deep down you always knew you weren’t attracted and didn’t want it. So, I let my kids date, but they are all brainwashed to courtship and want to wait to kiss on their wedding day or never take the risk of marriage at all because they never really saw love, but all I can do is date normally in front of them now and hope to break the common Christian misbeliefs. It is really important to learn from a variety of relationships before making a decision about who you are going to vow before God to keep yourself exclusively for for a lifetime.
So true, my mom made me read 10 Christian dating books (Like Waiting, Dating, and Choosing a Mate, Too Close too Soon, and Josh McDowell’s Why Wait) before I could date at 16 (when all I wanted to do was go to a basketball game with Kevin because he asked me and I didn’t even really know or like him). Reading the books, precursers to I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which came out my freshman year of college and my mother bought for my birthday, I totally idealized courtship. I bought into being too focused on finding a mate verses finding fun and learning to relate. My fiance and I wore matching “I’m Not Doing It” T-shirts from Josh McDowells Why Wait Seminars. I bought into exclusive dating too young and hadn’t planned to marry until 27 after I finished college, taught five years and bought a house. My first boyfriend asked me to marry him at 20 with a card on video in front of my parents saying, “Will you marry me, I asked your mom and she said yes, so you better say “Yes.” Waiting for the wedding night was over-rated. The 20 year marriage was done with sheer grit and willpower–not love– and divorce was the best thing that ever happened to it all. My parents had seen my years of loneliness and were supportive since there were 7 biblical grounds according to John Frame’s Biblical Ethics. So finally at 40 I began dating like I should have about 14 and got to experience what love is. I am glad I was a “strong-willed” type not afraid to divorce and disappoint the Christian expectations of my parents. Many suffer in silence trying to submit and be the perfect wife or worse — my sweet Christian pastor’s wife aunt left seven children motherless taking her life because the anguish and loneliness of incompatability and the pressures of pleasing the Christian Community with Biblical Self Discipline and Excellent Wive giving up your innate basic needs so impossible. We are all imperfect sinners and it’s just good to crawl in bed at night with someone who chemically is crazy about you no matter what because you haven’t done right just because they just click with you– you have to find that one who it is just easy to love for you– natural. I shouldn’t be such hard work all the time because you married someone your parents and everyone else thought was good for you even when deep down you always knew you weren’t attracted and didn’t want it. So, I let my homeschooled kids date, but they are all brainwashed to courtship and want to wait to kiss on their wedding day or never take the risk of marriage at all because they never really saw love, but all I can do is date normally in front of them now and hope to break the common Christian misbeliefs. It is really important to learn from a variety of relationships before making a decision about who you are going to vow before God to keep yourself exclusively for for a lifetime.
I found Tommy Nelson’s Song of Solomon series really captured a good biblical model.
http://dbcmedia.org/sermons/love-song-a-study-in-the-song-of-solomon/
First, I would suggest noting that you are addressing adults- it changes the whole attitude/perspective when reading the article. I was offended at first, until I read the follow up QA..and then I was like, “Ohhh…I see.” (And I almost missed the QA) 2nd, I would address staying pure during this kind of dating- because I think a great deal of people in our culture associate lots of dating with “being easy/lose”. Last, how about an article that addresses this issue to those who are not adults?
Something that I would just like to point out is that one of the premises for this is that his grandparents never divorced and had fun. This is not the same story in everyone’s grandparents. There was a huge social stigma over anyone ever divorcing back then. Unfortunately my grandmother did not enjoy her marriage at all and hardly ever mentions anything positive about my deceased grandfather, actually on the contrary. I’m sure he had good qualities, but all she chooses to remember are the bitterness…yet she always retells how she met him with excitement and animation. I know that the basic problem was a lack of putting our problems in God’s hands and forgiving and forgetting. But, what I want to mention is that dating, as it is carried out today, is based on externals and does not take into consideration what is truly important in a marriage. My grandmother was going by social norms (were his parents reputable? Did he have a good job? Was he handsome? Was she having those movie star experiences?), when truly we need to put God first and include Him in everything.
There is another side to this, and this is very interesting, but at this point I probably need to think more about this…The main thing in relationships is communication and both people being on the same page (in all honesty with each other and with God)…but yes, another time to think about this and we’ll see what I can understand…
I’veonly ever known courtship, also called dating, as I was raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It works. Divorce and other marital issues happen, just as they did in the Bible, but they’re not as prevalent as they are in general society. our teens don’t date/court. Adults do.
He wrote a book called: Boy meets Girl: Say hello to courtship. What courtship actually is, is getting to know their character rather than dating in an infatuated manner. You do go on dates with that person, but the dates are a way to see if you would be able to live with this person. You don’t need the physical for that, the physical is a reward. Asking their father to start a courtship is a way to respect their family and to show the father that you are not going behind anyone’s back with her. Courtship is a matter of integrity, and during a courtship you should truly know the person that you might marry so that you know that you won’t get divorced and that they are the one. Courtship is NOT JUST avoiding the sexually immoral acts but solidifying a real relationship with a person. I’m a little all over the place but you know, I think that courtship should actually be something that prepares you for marriage in a better way than dating does. Check out that guys sequel to “I kissed Dating Goodbye”. It’s really good.
What year did you read the book? You refer to that time of homeschooling being one of hiding from cops and getting books from public school dumpsters, but I Kissed Dating Goodbye only came out in ’97 and homeschooling was legal and curriculum was readily available. Please clarify. Thank you.
Thank you so much for writing this! I’ve wanted to write a book on this for a long time, but I really wanted to entitle it “Just Go On a *#^! Date!” You did a much better job than I did with a much better attitude. The Christian community really needs some help here. It’s a sad day when my non-Christian guy friends are often more intentional and clear than the Christian guys. I’m glad that instead of getting on my soapbox every time dating comes up in Christian context, I can sweetly ask someone if they’ve read this blog post.