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.
I love this post!!! I grew up with the “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” book too and thought it was totally a bad idea. I actually wrote the author a letter about it. I followed the date lots of different guys casually plan and learned so much through the experience. One thing I found completely creepy about guys who tried to “court” me was that they sneak attacked. They would invite me to hang out with a group from church and of course I wouldn’t say no to that. They would never pay, and their intentions were not clear. We would develop close friendships and then they would make their interest known and that was so hard to break their hearts since I had no idea of their intentions from the beginning.
THANK YOU! I come from a pretty traditional minded family, and I am also, but fortunately my parents became hands-off as we got older because they trusted us. While I didn’t really ever casually date, I have had a lot of good guy friends and have a pretty good sense of what I don’t want/ am not compatible with.
One thing that I don’t completely see eye to eye with is the idea that it’s ideal to get married quickly and young rather than try to resist temptation for a long time. I’m 28, and I’ve been “dating”, “going steady” or whatever you want to call it for 2 years now while we discern and prepare logistically for marriage. My boyfriend and I are committed to our morals and I personally am not tempted because we have already established what is appropriate now and we stick by that. If a person isn’t going to respect you while you’re dating enough to wait, then you can be guaranteed that they won’t respect you when you’re married either, and that can be manifested in a plethora of ways.
One more thought on the matter. Not everyone is called to marriage, and even some people who think that they are…well, God has other plans, and that’s ok. It’s more than ok. It’s good! A priest once said this, and I never forgot it: “Our calling is to be Christ and to bring Christ to others.” How we fulfill that is to be determined not by what we want, but by what He wants, and we need to be open to that. 🙂
I was with you for quite a ways, but this remark is in the first place factually wrong (“I Want to Hold Your Hand” preceded the days of the “hippie” by at least a couple of years, and in any case the “hippies” did not invent sexually transmitted disease), and in the second place, I can’t make any sense of it. What is your point about “the media” vis-à-vis “culture”?
“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.”
So, I’m by no stretch of the imagination an advocate of courtship, but I think in any realationship a guy needs to talk to her father, if for no other reason, out of respect. Because I would want any daughters I may have to be persued by guys with enough respect for both me and my daughter to come talk to me before seriously dating her. Hanging out and getting to know each other is one thing. Actual “dates” are another. But I think we may have differing definitions of “dating”.
Hippies didn’t invent STDs but they sure passed them around.
Thomas, Do you believe marriage to be a picture of Christ and the Church?
I was not raised in a community with believing parents and strict rules. Yet after 20 years of life without knowing God as I trudged through the modern dating lifestyle, I chose courtship. It took a two year dating hiatus where I chose to focus solely on my relationship with God to make it clear what I wanted: respect. I didn’t want to be deceived by nice appearances or small talk, I didn’t want to be paid for because I am a hard working woman who can submit to a man but can also take care of herself, and I didn’t want the expectation that I belonged to someone in any way (because I only belonged to God).
For my husband and I, courtship didn’t involve asking parental consent because it was irrelevant since they were not able to provide the Christian counsel we would seek as a couple anyway. We knew each other for four months when he asked because we had spent lots of time around each other in church settings and groups (both of us highly introverted but still quite capable of social interaction) and felt that we wanted to get to know each other better and determine our compatibility and potential as a couple. We read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, making it our relationship’s foundation, and viewed each other as no more than friends but used the boyfriend/girlfriend label. We did not spend time (traditional dating) alone with others of the opposite sex because we were committed to each other as friends to test our relationship’s potential. Yet, we did no more than give friendly hugs and occasionally hold hands. My Christian counselor was shocked at my inability to gush over my boyfriend, who I already knew was an incredible guy that I was happy to be with. I was simply guarding my heart because that was my responsibility to protect my friend and myself.
So when one day I realized I could not separate my heart and my head anymore about this wonderful person, that I wanted to be by his side always, the floodgates of my heart opened again. Yet this time it was completely different than any feeling I’d had before. My love was pure, deep, and mature. I had spent enough time evaluating and knew I was ready to answer yes when he asked a month later. Our first kiss was at our wedding, and it was awesome. We’ve been married 10 years and have a 3 year old and a 1 year old.
We work as a team on everything, switching leadership as needed based on our strengths. We do our best to give respect, encouragement, and friendship to each other every day. Love is a choice every day for us.
I’m alarmed at the notion that courtship couples have high divorce rates. You make a choice, a promise, and you keep it. Then, when things are challenging you trust God to get you through it. Trust your partner to get through it with you. We have had lots of different kinds of challenges, but we’ve made it through and found out more about each other as we’ve changed. Here’s an excellent blog post from Matt Walsh about commitment to your changing spouse that I think is spot on, titled, “My Wife is Not the Same Person I Married”: http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/05/29/wife-person-married/
Modern dating is a mess. Traditional dating is interesting, but I wonder if it can be resurrected with the attitudes people have about love today. Courtship is unusual. It sounds great in theory, it takes a lot of time to test things out, and it can break your heart, as I saw happen with some friends of ours. The point is that you have to decide what is best for you as a single person – NOT your parents – and you have to guard your heart. You must communicate what you want in order to find it. When you find it you fight to keep it strong and don’t let it go. Until you find it, you live your life with purpose and trust God to bring an answer to the desires of your heart.
Our rings are monogrammed with our anniversary and the words “We Smooched.” It’s a fun reminder of our hard work to get to know each other before becoming one, and also reminds us that we are always doing just that. Courtship can be an excellent foundation for marriage when driven with respect for one another.
I neglected to mention that my courtship lasted two years, including our four month engagement.
Wow! This is a very interesting article Thomas! I don’t believe my parents are into courting, but this has really got me thinking about dating, and how I want to go about doing it. Thanks! This was my first time reading an article of yours, but it certainly wont be the last!
Imperfect believing parents should be pointing their naturally sinful children to Christ through the Word and prayer and worship and example. They should never encourage their children to try out someone other than the Lord. Marriage is a picture of Christ and His Bride, the Church (Ephesians 5:32) . Christ has one bride, who He redeemed with His own blood. He had no other bride than His chosen, precious bride. He didn’t dabble with others in any way that even had the slightest hint of unfaithfulness. Marriage was made to show this relationship. I know that, even as believers, we are imperfect at everything we do and we make judgment calls that aren’t excellent all the time(!) but I think we can agree that we all want to be Christlike. Courtship, though it may look a little different in different settings, best suits this along with agreement with the Biblical notion of headship.
Bad courtships or courtships that lead to divorce are no reason to abandon the principle. Would we abandon singing in worship just because it didn’t sound good? Though I disagree with your post it has most certainly pointed out that we all need to rely on the Lord for grace to live for His Glory (which I know you want to do) and help direct young folk to do the same in all areas of life including the big step of getting married.
Wow, this is fantastic. I think you have managed to narrow down the idea of courtship to an identifiable level, as well as illustrate the name of something doesn’t determines its quality.
Something I think might also be true in some cases, not neccesarily all, but some, is that in a courtship community where the father is taking a very large role in the potential for relationships with his children, it indicates a lack of trust and insecurity. If the father has raised up his children in the way they should go, then they won’t leave it when they are older. It’s biblical. If he doesn’t trust his children to seek his advice and to follow God before they are married, he probably won’t trust them after they are married. I also think this can be an indicator of a paren’ts insecurity, which you touched on reagarding that they don’t want their child’s marriage to turn out like theirs. I think it is a little more than that though. They are afraid that they have not adequately taught and trained their children to choose and act wisely, so rather than risk finding out that they are not the perfect parent with perfect children, they continue to train, limit and monitor their children.
Excellent post. Thanks a ton for publishing.
It is always nice to come across a person serious about an issue who studies it enough to alter his/her perspective.
“where the father is taking a very large role in the potential for relationships with his children, it indicates a lack of trust and insecurity. If the father has raised up his children in the way they should go, then they won’t leave it when they are older. It’s biblical. If he doesn’t trust his children to seek his advice and to follow God before they are married, he probably won’t trust them after they are married.”
Exactly. Thank you.
I disagree, but not because I courted. I think your assumption (which is all it is since you have less experience in dating around it sounds, and did not provide any studies) that it would be less tempting if one were to date around is naive. I’ve seen plenty in the noncourting world where that didn’t work either. So I think you miss the issue, though your intentions are good. The method isn’t the problem. The problem is that you have 2 sinners in either case, broken, with flaws. Temptation is a problem regardless. There is no less or more. It may vary personally, but it overall it doesn’t. Why try to argue over which is better rather than deal with the root of the problems?
Further, we matchmake or date to find someone who is “compatible”…which really just means “easier to love”. We assume that easier to love will equate to an easier more successful marriage. We assume a method will make it go easier. Dating around won’t. Hate to break it to you.
The reality is though is that it is hard. And it is hard regardless of how one dated, how well one protected themselves physically/spiritually prior to marriage, or how great a match a couple is. It’s HARD. And the reason marriages fall apart is because they give up and don’t want to deal with hard.
My advice. Kids, obey your parents. Honor them in how they ask you to go about your dating life while under their roof even if you don’t agree. Honor the person you want to build a relationship with, and guard their heart better than your own. Protect them, as they may not be your future spouse. And when you do marry, live like Christ calls you to every day toward your spouse. It will be hard, that’s the reality, but it will be so so worth it.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
So So true. Would love to talk to you more about this. Mabey over a bite to eat. Gabe romo
Wow, I never really thought about this. I’ve admired those couples who met and made it all the way through their engagements before kissing–but they were young. I was nearly 30 when I married–not because of the whole courtship/dating issue, just God’s planning. But I can really see where you are coming from. The older I got, the more it seemed that the fellows were afraid to ask me on a date because it meant a life sentence. I did not ‘date’ from the time I was 22 until I met my husband-to-be as a blind date at 27. Those were barren years as I watched my friends get married and start families. But still no one asked me out. My father only ‘chased them away’ when they stayed too late at the house, LOL. (I had a few friends who did that.) By the time I met my husband, I had given up on dating and socializing with men at church altogether. I came from a relatively large church too, but the guys were all getting married off or moving away for jobs. God still had a plan. He trusted me to know the difference between that casual relationship and the real deal.
Interesting. I was never sold on “courtship” because I always felt the difference was really just about semantics, definitions, and rules more than some name like “dating” vs “courtship”. I’m from the era that when I was growing to that age when this was becoming an issue, the question that was the hot topic was “should you kiss on a first date”. At some point the question became “should you have sex on a first date”. If that’s what “dating” is, I want no part of it. So my opinion has always been “set yourself godly standards, stick to them, and be open to meet people however, whenever, and wherever you can”. However, I’ve also decided that it takes a lot more than personality and “having fun” together to make a good match. Having said that, my friends are beginning to be grandparents and I’m still single with precious few “dates” to pad my resume, so what do I know.
I’m really glad you wrote this article. I was raised in a more secular family with no restrictions on dating, but found that many of the friends I met in college struggled with the idea of courtship. While some are now married or engaged, this was often a topic of discussion and I generally felt uneasy as well as uneducated about the idea. It was really nice to see a well reasoned, level headed criticism from someone who clearly has intimate knowledge of this issue.
I would like to caution however, in regards your brief reference to arrange marriage in India, that lower divorce rates do not always mean happier marriages or better situations for the men and women involved. Particularly in non-Western societies (but certainly in Western ones as well), low divorce rates often mask problems with power dynamics within a relationship, as women who would otherwise leave are unable to do so (and in rare cases vice-versa). Divorce is a horrible and painful process, but there are situations where it is a better alternative to enduring violence or abuse.
I do no know nearly enough about the particular case of Indian arranged marriages to know if they are working better or worse than love based marriages, but I do feel that more data is needed than a simple divorce rate to try to make a claim about the quality of the system.
Thank you again for this article though. It gave me a much better insight into the challenges some of my friends have been facing over the past few years and I think I agree with your central argument that more, less-intensive relationships can be healthy.
Best,
J.Christopher Proctor
Tulsa, Oklahoma
I very much agree with this post. I’m 23 years old and was raised in a home that pushed courtship (homeschooled all the way through, purity ring at 14, told if a guy asked me out to say “go ask my dad, etc.). I was totally okay with that at the time.
Now I’m older, my friends are starting to get married (younger brother is getting married in 6 months), and I’ve only been on a handful of awful dates with two guys I met on Match.com. I do still live at home (working on this one… Just graduated nursing school) and I have some guy friends, but I just don’t get asked out… At all. In the last year and a half, I’ve been asked out twice (totally creepy guys that I was very uncomfortable around) and I politely told them thanks, but no thanks.
I’ve started going to a different church that has a great college ministry (and several cute guys) but I’m still not being asked out. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked my close friends if there’s something wrong with me, but the truth is, guys just don’t ask us out anymore. I want to be pursued. I don’t want to have to make the first move. It’s great to read that it’s not just happening in my world.
Wow. Thomas, I was prepared to totally disagree with you when I saw a friend post your article, but I have to say I really appreciated the thoughts you shared! Thanks for writing this. As a parent wanting my kids to follow Jesus more closely, the courtship model seemed like a great idea. I read Josh Harris’ book years ago and was so happy that there was a way that my kids could avoid the landmine that my dating years had been. It seemed that if they embraced the courtship model they could avoid physical and emotional intimacy with someone they would possibly never marry. (always a wise decision!)
Courtship sounded like a genuinely great idea, but as I was reading your article I felt a light go on. When you asked about it being Biblical, I realized I needed to reevaluate my opinion on it again in light of Scripture. We are so prone to creating a model or standard that we use to live the Christian life and to live a life that “pleases” God. (maybe forgetting He is already pleased with us because of all His Son has accomplished!) We love rules since that is easier than being led by the Spirit.
Until today, I had never seen that implementing the courtship model as a means to pleasing God could just be one more unnecessary burden we place on ourselves. I think my own fear for my kids having to taste the heart wrenching grief of sinful choices led me towards this model. While reading your article I realized that even in this area God wants to lead us by His own Spirit, not a set of rules. We miss out on the freedom we have in Christ when we follow rules instead of the Spirit of God. So, thanks for the great challenge today!
There are a couple of things that I would bring up to you, Thomas. I can appreciate your grandparents style of dating and see how it worked greatly in their era. However, I wouldn’t say that the reason so many of them had lasting marriages was because of their dating style. There are so many things that would impact that and divorce was not the easy option it is now for modern marriages. I would love to see you write a book on this topic, but if you do I would consider more of the cultural backdrop that surrounded the length of those Great Generation marriages.
I also have seen a great number of friends divorce recently, but none of them courted. I like your idea of doing some research on how courtship affects the divorce outcome. Since so many arranged marriages in other countries don’t end in divorce, maybe there are other factors to consider in why the divorce rate is so high.
One last thought….when my sister in I were in public high school years ago, we dated a lot of guys. My dad had a house rule. Before the date, he would invite them into the living room for a visit. He was always kind. I can’t tell you how loved and valued that made us feel even though we joked about it at the time. At my sister’s recent class reunion some guys brought that up and remembered it 30 years later. He took the opportunity to share Christ with them and reminded them we were special to him and he wanted them to treat us that way. I would highly recommend daddy’s today taking that approach. 🙂 In my 20’s when I found the guy I was pretty sure I wanted to marry, my dad’s opinion was still so important to me. Guys can see through other guys in a way that sometimes the opposite sex doesn’t. (I know that goes for girls with girls, too.) Sometimes we could save a lot of heart ache for ourselves if we consider their wisdom, so I would be careful to not present all dads out there as tyrants keeping their girls in a castle. 🙂
Again, great, great thoughts today. Thanks for writing this.
Is the author married? If so, did he court or date?
Thank you for your comments. I was always opposed to the concept of courtship for a couple of reasons.
I was raised in a non-christian home by alcoholic parents who weren’t even aware that I was in high school much less able to approve potential “courtship suitors” for me. No Christian parent in their right mind would have been ok with me being a potential “courtship girl” for their Godly son, even though I had a vibrant growing walk with Christ throughout high school and college. My husband wouldn’t have been a suitable mate for me if my parents had been Christians and were following courtship principles due to his atheistic upbringing. We have been married for 33 years and in full-time ministry almost that whole time.
Great article on how else to view the process of finding our spouse. I just think we need to be careful not to assume that technique equals success.
I think we should do what makes sense for us. For some it might make sense to date, and for others to court. I would think we would be able to answer what technique works for us based on a host of different factors. At the end of the day we know that our chief end is to glorify God not matter what technique we choose.
Secondly, Jesus clearly stated that divorce was an issue of the heart, not a byproduct of the process that was utilized to get married. So if there is divorce, outside of the provisions given in the Bible for doing so, then maybe there is something deeper that contributed to the divorce than spouse finding techniques.
Lastly, we should ask God for wisdom, which he gives freely, to make the right decisions; but most definitely resting in God’s never changing nature that He is true and faithful to his word; and when He says that as a loving Father he will not give us stones if we ask for bread he really, really, really means it. Herein is the struggle for the Christian, do we trust technique or do we trust our Provider? From personal experience this is one of the hardest things to do, especially being from a culture of “do it yourselfers” and “10 steps to do this or that”. But such is the Christian life – we fight the good fight in matters such as this.
Thank you for this. I agree with almost everything and it needed to be said. I know more people in the home school community who believe in courtship as the only acceptable road to marriage that aren’t married than ones who are. There is a very small and select pool of people that they can pull from and I know personally of girls who have met a guy outside of that select group that dad’s have vetoed even getting to know better. I feel sorry for the girls who feel like have run out of options and their families or fathers won’t budge or even consider a guy who wasn’t homeschooled and doesn’t go to their home based church.
I had 2 “failed courtships” that left me very scarred. The first time it didn’t work out I was convinced that I was ruined and no one could ever love me. That is another message the courtship advocates preach, well ones I have heard, a failed relationship with one person means you are less worthy and like “used chewing gum”. Believe it or not I have heard that exact term used. It was hard to end the courtships because my family would try to tell me that it was something that I should work out. Not being attracted to someone and not at all meshing with their personality isn’t something that should just be worked out in my opinion.
Thankfully after 2 failed attempts at courtship I decided to take matters into my own hands and try dating. No I didn’t marry the first guy I dated but it wasn’t a traumatizing experience to move on. After much time and soul searching I even managed to convince myself that someone could love me even if I had gone out with someone else.
When you have dated more people I agree that it gives you a better idea of what you would want I a spouse. Just when I had decided that I was fine with being single and the kind of guy I would want probably didn’t exist anyway I met my husband. I pretty much knew right away that we would end up together. I tell people all the time that I had been with the wrong guy enough times that I could tell the difference when the right one came along and I didn’t need to waste any extra time. We have had our ups and downs and disagreements but our relationship grows stronger all the time. I can say we have been married for almost 3 years now and hopefully you can ask us in 50 more years and we will still be able to say that it gets better all the time. Thank you again for bringing this issue up for discussion.
I don’t normally respond to blog posts, but I felt compelled to say something to a couple of your posts. I fully agree with most of what you say, but feel that the parent’s “advisory” role should be more involved than what you describe.
My main problems lie with your instructions to not date a girl if she says to ask her father first. Remember that in the eyes of God, that girl is still under her father’s headship if she isn’t married, even if she’s an older single. If he expects you to ask first, you should ask first. Don’t shun a perfectly good girl because her father wants to know if someone’s potentially going to take his daughter out from under his headship.
You also said to move to a church for the single group. This is not a Godly reason to leave a sound, Bible-believing church. A young single can learn just as much about life and marriage if s/he takes the time to watch the married couples in the church. I honestly love being in a church filled with married couples because I have an insider’s look into what marriage looks like, and countless examples of how one might live out a Godly marriage.
I totally agree with you. The asking permission thing is more of a respect thing rather than making sure with the king that you can date one of his subjects. In my experience, the father-daughter relationship is built on trust. The girl trusts her daddy with her emotions, and she also trusts God with them. God and her daddy will be doing some checking. And wether the girl wants it or not, the daddy ALWAYS wants to know who is the bimbo making moves on his daughter, and ALWAYS wants to be asked. They like to see respect, and will likely say yes. If they like the look and attitude of you.
Always is a tricky word.
What about non-believing fathers? Deceased fathers? Absent fathers? What about a woman living and working in Seattle whose father lives in Atlanta?
“Remember that in the eyes of God, that girl is still under her father’s headship if she isn’t married, even if she’s an older single.”
Can you provide a biblical basis for this assertion?
Very good points…thanks much! Hard to fit a mostly Eastern idea (courtship/matchmaking) into a Western culture… It mostly works in the East because it is accepted and it is understood to be for keeps. But it certainly is not always happy!
LC
China