Courtship (Or lack of) Advice

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bds32

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Hi all,

I figured I would post my life problems in hope that some of you can shine some light of personal wisdom to help me 🙂

Background:
I met my friend, we will call her Jane, about 4 months ago. About the time I met her I had begun studying on the ideas associated with “courtship” as compared to “dating”. I found that courtship presented a logical argument for building a lasting relationship that keeps God at the center of everything. About two months into our new friendship I decided to test the waters and bring up the idea of courthship. I sent her some information about it and she seemed to agree with it. We both felt more time as friends would be beneficial to decide about this.

A few weeks ago we had another talk about becoming exclusive and involving our families. She said she is healing from a previous relationship still and is not ready to meet my family as that would signify a serious step in our relationship. I see her as a friend with interest and I know that I need to be cautious to not fall for her when there is no committment…but its so hard! I want to see her regularly but I honestly feel I cannot do that without developing stronger feelings for her. I want her to meet my family! I want to meet hers! I want to honestly pursue if it is God’s will for us to be married but she has told me that she is not ready emotionally…Grr, frustration!

What can I do to help with my impatience? I pray constantly but I also think seeing her less might be the best recipe even though it is not what I want. 😦 After four months of this, I feel my brain is telling me that reality has said to move on but my heart is telling me to wait…

Also some other considerations that you all can shed light on:

-her parents do not speak english…how would you handle this situation if you were in a courtship with this situation

-long distance …I will soon be leaving for military service and will be stationed overseas. The base I will be at allows you to bring family but I would hate to rush into marriage just so she could be by my side…

Thanks guys and gals, God bless and peace be with you all!
 
Sometimes the timing just isn’t right. I’d move on but stay friends with her just not see her as much if it troubles you. She may just need a lot of time to recover and it’s better to give her the time then push it but she shouldn’t expect you to wait around either while she sorts out her feelings over a long period of time. Women tend to take longer than men to get over stuff especially relationships because we live more by our emotions I think and sometimes poor more of our selves in a relationship. I’m not saying that men don’t have a hard time too they just appear to get over things faster. Prayers. 👍:cool:
 
I will pray for you to find guidance in your particular situation.

The only piece of advice I can offer concerns the language issue. My in-laws and I do not speak a common language. Naturally, early on in my relationship with the woman I eventually married, they wanted to get to know me. We had a conversation with my then-girlfriend acting as interpreter. I think she was the only one who was uncomfortable with the idea (if your gf is unwilling, perhaps she has a willing sibling or there will be another community member).

I looked at them when listening to their questions and statements and when giving my responses (though it might be a good idea to have a cultural primer, first - some cultures consider looking an elder in the eye to be offensive).
 
Courting is usually done when the young people are still living with their parents. You can date chastely, and “court” the young lady in terms of behaving with honor, but you don’t have to jump right into meeting the parents. See, when 2 younger people start courting, they are still in some way dependent upon their parents and are seeking their parents’ approval. You sound as if that is no longer your situation, since you are going into the military soon.

And parents are usually the ones who initiate the courtship, or if they do not initiate it, they are instrumental in wanting their young adult children to court.

But there is absolutely nothing wrong with chastely dating.

However, it sounds as though this young lady is just not ready at this time. I’d let it go and move on. If at some point in the future, things open up for you, then you can celebrate.
 
Guard your heart. There’s a big chance that you won’t find what you seek in that girl.
 
bds32 said:
I want to honestly pursue if it is God’s will for us to be married but she has told me that she is not ready emotionally…
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And this is all you need to know. You’re looking for a relationship that will lead to marriage, and she’s not ready for that. Wish her well, keep her in your prayers, and move on.

Luna
 
Don’t marry her just because you are going overseas [and since it allows families, thankfully its somewhere safe]. I knew a lot of guys in the service that got married faster then they should have and for the wrong reasons [away from home for the first time, about to deploy, about to be stationed overseas, etc]. Even if she is the “one,” the stress of being overseas [which would only increase if she was with you] added to the stress that comes with any newly married couple will most likely destroy the relationship. I suggest you try the long distance not married approach.
 
The others have sound advice. It seems she is not ready. Perhaps you should scale back to phone calls, when you are deployed, to keep the channel open for future discernment (I see no reason to cut off or reduce contact). The military has a long tradition of long distance relationships and even weddings (even Catholic ones, I’m sure). If it is to be, it will work out.
 
Luvz2travel said:
Sometimes the timing just isn’t right.
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Agreed. It sounds like this is the case in your situation. It’s a tough thing to aknowledge, but sometimes you just need to accept that. A relationship takes two to move forward, and this girl doesn’t seem to be in the right place to pursue that right now, regardless of her being interested in you. I was in a relationship of almost two years before my ex-boyfriend broke up with me. He loves me very much, and I love him greatly…but it was all a matter of timing. Neither one of us was where we needed to be for our relationship to move forward in the situation we were at, and that was the tough truth to accept.

No one is saying that if you need to focus on yourself and only yourself right now, nothing will happen with this girl in the future. You can never know what the future holds. Perhaps once you go back home, things will be different and both you and her will be in a better place to pursue a real commitment. Sometimes accepting that things simply can’t be for now is very, very difficult…but you just need to listen to God closely. If he is telling you to move on, even if just for now, do so. As difficult and/or painful as it may be, things are always a bit easier to deal with when you keep Him by your side.

Always pray, pray, pray! And trust in God, no matter what. “Pray, hope and don’t worry.” 🙂 I wish you the best, and I will send prayers your way!
 
To be honest, I don’t get the whole timing thing. In my perhaps not very humble opinion, that’s either not reason enough for a break-up or a cover for something else. I wouldn’t like to offend anyone but this is just what I think.
 
If she isn’t ready, she isn’t ready. You either need to make a decision to cut bait or to wait for her to be ready. I think waiting shows respect.
 
Try not to overthink it. Too many books give you these outlines about how to find the perfect partner. They make good points, but the reality is that there is no magic formula. Its the principals that matter. So whether you call it dating or courtship, it doesn’t matter.

I’d say its very hard to impose these steps when the culture doesn’t even remotely approach relationships this way. And while the culture has many things wrong with it, there are books like “I gave dating a chance” that show that dating can be done in a manner that discerns marriage rather than blurring the lines between dating and marriage.

In regards to spending time with her, I would not discourage it unless she asks for some space. I think the real risk you have is building infatuation. Much of falling for someone is based more on fantasy than on reality. Any time you daydream about a future date, or a wedding, or special moments (which honestly tend to eventually lead to sexual thoughts anyway), you fill in the blanks of what you don’t know about the person with your ideals. Its impossible to recognize that you’re doing this because your ideals tend to be mostly what you think is normal.

Whereas spending time with her will be actually getting to know her. And if you do find that you continue to get more and more excited about who God made her to be, remind yourself daily that she is first and foremost a friend. Pray for the strength to guard your heart and to accept that this beautiful person may not end up being the one for you.

It is totally ok to not incoporate family into courtships. One thing different about today is that many times when we’re ready to discern marriage, we’re not living with our parents’. The women are not as young and still under the care the protection of their father’s. Moreover parents may not feel it is there place to make such judgments for their children. I can even say parents’ are not always the best judges. My mom tried to talk me out of marrying a Catholic. She thought my standards were far too high and mostly she just wanted me to fall in love with someone. She is a hopeless romantic. Any time I asked for advise, she’d get insecure because in her mind it was just about “knowing.” My asking questions to her meant I was doubting and unsure and that meant not true love in her mind. Meanwhile when i talked to my Dad about courtship and my values, he said he’d be honored but completely trusted my judgment. He felt he had no (name removed by moderator)ut to add.

Beyond the fact that culturally parents’ today don’t know how to guide well or have no interest in it, there is the added pressure of bonding with the entire family. This can in fact make it more difficult to break up. A lot of families when they meet a suiter assume “Wow this is serious. This could be my son in law.” This puts a lot of pressure on the couple to take that step toward marriage before they’re ready. What it sounds this girl is saying is that she’s not ready for you to become emotionally attached to her family. If you break up, right now it is you losing her and her losing you. But with family, it means breaking up friendships with other family members and this can put strain on the discerning process.

I’d recommend the book “Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar.” It is a collection of writtings throughout the ages about how we’ve gone about choosing spouses. We’ve always thought we found the perfect system, but no system is perfect. Its the principals that matters. I think its a much better book than books that tell you step by step how to date/court in a counter cultural fashion.
 
Wow- you are about to go through some major changes going into the military - and honestly, it’s best not to bring her or even try to bring her right now in my opinion. You will be so very, very busy when first entering the military and moving over seas - now on a positive note, it will be a wonderful time for you two to write - yes actually write letters to one another and of course chat on here. Believe me, my husband was on a sub and although I had known him since my first day of American High School, I still learned a great deal from our letters and chats when we were apart. And the man I thought was my best friend - well I found that he was more than my best friend to me and ironically(like your friend’s situation) this was after a break up of a serious relationship. As much as we wanted to be together, being apart brought its own longing, loving sadness (uh oh sounds like a Country song…) -by the time he had time off to come and visit me in college - well we had a whole new level to our relationship. And a huge positive is the binder full of letters that we each have from each other as well as some of the printed out conversations we had online) I’m sure ours is a very unique situation, but it can happen. And it’s hard being in the military and having a wife - and you’ll need a strong, strong marriage to deal with the TDY’s and all of the other things that will cause you two to be apart if something greater than friendship should transpire between you two. Also, this will give you time to buy a rosetta stone or pimsleur course or even take one of the PACE courses in the military to help learn her language - it sounds like your that serious -so show her- and if you do wind up getting to meet her family later on, I expect they may be impressed that you went through the trouble of trying to learn the language or at least went through the trouble to try to be able to understand their daughter , their traditions and their language a little better. (you learn a great deal about traditions and cultures from studying the language)
Only God knows what will happen. But maybe this is his way of letting you get to know her deeper while she gets the time to heal from her last relationship and has a chance to get to know you deeper from afar. I expect you need to ask her if she’ll stay in touch with you - I would NOT reccomend getting married right now - there is a high enough divorce rate and its even higher in the military - this could be a chance for the two of you to really get to know one another with no pressure. I think the worst case scenario is that you find your not meant for each other and you perhaps wind up with a really close female friend.
God Bless and Good Luck -
Rye
 
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