Courting Eternity

In our house, we don’t date. We court.

For us, specifically, what does that mean? My eldest daughter, (AKA The Test Kid), has recently embarked upon this adventure, and I am excited to report, is officially being courted by a young man of sterling character (AKA The Intended) that I am excited to add to our family. They met via Facebook through mutual Orthodox friends, and after The Intended expressed more than a passing interest in The Test Kid, she instructed him to talk to us. He asked permission to seek her hand in marriage, to which we told him “not yet”. We felt that she needed a year to mature a bit more and to experience her first year away from the family at school without the added stress of potential relationship drama if things didn’t pan out. He was encouraged to pursue a better friendship with her with no expectation of strings attached for either of them for a year. They began having strategic conversations about everything from favorite breakfast cereals to opinions on Middle East politics. How do I know this? First, because my daughter has a solid relationship with her parents, and tells us most of the stuff of note that happens in her life. The other way I know is because my children have NO reasonable expectation of privacy until they are adults, which doesn’t magically happen when the clock strikes 12:01 on their 18th birthday. They gain their privacy when they are engaged to be married. Adulthood is not autonomy. Autonomy is an illusion that no one, if they’re honest, ever really experiences. The only people who make decisions without ever considering the influence of those decisions on others around them are narcissist sociopaths.

As the saying goes in Orthodoxy, we are saved together, but we are damned alone. So if I did a spot check of her messages to find that she was up chatting until the wee hours of the morning, I would point out to her that she didn’t do that with her other friends, and he was still just a friend, so to cool it. And they did. The Intended was vigilant in observing our guidelines and expectations. He knew that this was his chance, not just potentially to win her admiration, but also our approval. He understood that those two things were completely intermingled. Our daughter defers to our judgment and knows that, while we respect her opinion, it carries the weight of that of a stock holder versus the president of the company. We listen to what our kids have to say, but our family is no democracy.

The Intended sought not to undermine our authority, but to bolster it. As he worked to get to know, not just The Test Kid, but also the family. It became obvious that they were growing more and more fond of one another, so we added phone and video chat conversations to the mix. At the end of the year, we informed him that he was invited to travel the thousand or so miles to our town to be our guest. He needed to meet all of us in person, and I do mean ALL of us- her siblings, her grandparents, her godparents, and her priest. Any one of those people could have thrown a yellow flag onto the field and asked for an instant replay, to use a sports analogy. The Intended was prepared to answer questions openly and honestly about any concerns. Why would someone submit themselves to this scrutiny? That answer is simple: because he believed that our daughter was worth the hassle, and she believed that he was up to the challenge. At the end of it all, he was given our blessing to court our daughter with the express goal of an engagement of marriage only at such time that they are both in a more settled place, he in his career and she with her schooling. When we are ready to plan a wedding, the engagement itself may be rather short. Some future events are still a bit amorphous, as she is The Test Kid, and as the first, gets to be the guinea pig. One thing I can tell you for sure is that our process has made a joy to consider adding this man and his family to our own. There is no cleaning of guns or weird power struggle between my husband and The Intended. Why should there be? He has met and surpassed our expectations and is everything that we could want for our beloved daughter. We are excited to soon call him our son.
So yes, in our house, we don’t date. We court. Why?

• Dating encourages deceit and courtship encourages honesty.

When you date, because of the superficial nature of your relationship, most everything is an illusion. You present the Facebook version of yourself, because you suspect that this person is going to be one of many that you will date, so why put all of yourself out there to be rejected time and again. After a time, daters may break up because the other person “changed”, when in reality, it was probably who they were all along. How much more hurtful to finally reveal yourself, only to have the true you rejected. With courtship, you are less likely to tell those little white lies, if for nothing else, because until you know each other very well, there is someone nearby to keep you accountable. Since the object of courtship is to find someone to marry, you want to reveal as much of the important stuff as early as you can. That way, if something is a red flag, you can end the relationship early before as much emotion is invested.

• Dating feeds off of individualism, while courtship encourages family solidarity and accountability.

Dating is about me, me, me. What I need in this moment, who I find attractive, or if I’m lonely. Courtship involves the larger community around you and assumes a level of not just intrusion (which can happen), but also support. The nature of the courting relationship dictates that extended family and friends are getting to know the couple, as well. How often do you hear of an abusive relationship that begins with the abuser separating the abused from their friends and family? The family provides a chorus of accountability. Dating encourages the isolation which makes abuse easier. It is much more likely that a scuzzball can pull the wool over your eyes when infatuation is at its peak, but getting past your grandparents, your parents, your best friends, and your priest? That’s a bit harder. And it should be. This is the rest of your life we are talking about, after all.

• Dating is about sex, while courtship is about commitment.

Dating as we understand it changed with the introduction of the automobile. Quaint as that sounds, ever since modern dating was invented, it was about taking the budding relationship off of the front porch swing where the family sat nearby in earshot, and into the backseat of the car. A person’s first sexual experience used to happen much later in late adolescence and then, only when you were relatively sure that the person you were sleeping with was the person you were going to marry. If an oopsie moment happened, you just moved up the wedding date. Postmodern dating has devolved into the hookup, which doesn’t even require first names being exchanged. Not everyone wants to engage in as much mindless, soulless sex as they can as a means of finding “The One”. Courtship allows you to learn about the person: who they are, what they believe, what they are passionate about. With dating, the carrot at the end of the stick is a sexual encounter, but courtship’s carrot is marriage, after which you get to have intimate, meaningful, procreative sex with your spouse. Incidentally, studies show that married people have more and better sex than non-marrieds, though that perception is skewed by every mouthpiece of the culture. Don’t believe the hype.

• The goal of dating is temporary, while the goal of courtship is eternal.

Dating is tied up in the idea that your physical attraction for someone is enough to overcome any obstacle to your eventual happiness. Most people today have never sat down and taken stock of themselves: what they believe, what are their standards, what do they want for their life and how to accomplish that when it comes to the most important decision you can make in your adult life- who will share it with you. Dating keeps you in the moment. Courtship, in comparison, asks you to start with a certain standard. For our family, the requirements are pretty easy. The suitor (or when our son embarks upon this, the suitee) must be an Orthodox Christian in good standing, well-read, respectful, and willing to submit to the courtship gauntlet. Our daughter was saved from a great many awkward conversations from about the time she was twelve with creepy guys whose intentions she knew to be less than pure. She just “let them down easy” because they weren’t Orthodox, and certainly not even thinking about marriage. She has been raised to be a confident, self-assured young woman. This is because we aren’t looking at the person as one more in a long string of people that will cycle through our child’s life until they finally find The One. That right person may not be the first candidate, but I’d lay a bet that by courting they won’t be the twenty-first.

• Dating ignores the reality of human shortcomings while courting respects them.

Just because we raise our children to be pure and chaste, doesn’t mean that they aren’t human. Some things are as simple as chemistry. I don’t care how many Promise Ring ceremonies or how many True Love Waits studies you throw at the most well-intentioned person, if you give them voluminous unstructured alone time with someone that they find attractive, it is only a matter of time before holding hands progresses to a peck, a peck becomes a kiss, etc., etc. It is what we are designed for, and in this age, how many are really all that well-intentioned? Courting wisely keeps the physical to a minimum by having a chaperone around to keep things honest. We have done it both physically by hanging with the couple when they video chat or are in actual physical proximity, and we do this virtually, because they consent to the possibility of being spot-checked in their texting back and forth, too. Could they get around it? Absolutely. Where there is a will, there is a way. But the courting couple isn’t looking to buck tradition, and appreciates the support that is necessary to make their wedding night all that it should be. If you are putting this much effort in with a goal of chastity in mind, why would you shoot yourself in the foot?

• Dating is practice for divorce, while courtship is practice for marriage.

What is the life cycle of the unsuccessful dating couple? Find someone who is attractive and pleasant to be around. Creep them on Facebook. Creep their exes on Facebook. Hang out. Go drinking. Hook up. Get invested. Get irritated. Get bored. Break up. Repeat. If that is what you are practicing, is it any wonder that people then get divorced? With courtship, you discuss the issues that matter in depth before there is any plunge into emotion. Money, religion, raising children, political views- you know, the things that matter and that any marriage counselor will tell you are the things that people divorce over. Those issues that will sink the ship of the superficial relationship are hashed out or decided as grounds to dissolve and walk away before there are children and 50% of all future earnings on the line. What’s more is that the issues are discussed in the broader context of those who are older and, ostensibly, wiser. The habit being formed, instead of blowing up and breaking up, is that the couple can turn to grandparents, parents, and their clergy if they need the help of the wider community. They learn how to communicate productively, and how to stick.

There is so much more that I could say on this topic, and probably will continue to elaborate on in the future. Your children deserve so much more than the hook-up culture. It’s our job as parents to help our children find the “one that (their) soul loves”, which is a bit more of a weighty challenge than finding “that really hot guy/girl that other people will envy seeing me with”. We are warned that charm is deceitful and that beauty fades, but as you examine the dating culture, it doesn’t add up to much more than that. I am not saying that all people who date are doomed, but why create a huge, unnecessary obstacle to overcome, when a bit of structure and discipline can give the new couple a better foundation to build upon? The more happy marriages that can be fostered will lead to contented and more stable children. In the end, isn’t that a much better legacy to pass on than what our young people currently dread? So, no, though our family and friends solicitations were well-intended and tongue-in-cheek, we don’t need to do a series of background checks, we don’t need to clean any guns or swords around him, and we don’t dread “giving our daughter away”. This stage in our life and theirs is in the blessed, sacred order of God’s plan. How exciting is that?