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pianistclare
Guest
Yup.
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ProVobis
Guest
I think they call it “hanging out” these days. Maybe not.
Mary_Gail_36
New member
My kids are still too young to date, my oldest is 14, he’s a really young 14 though.Not me. I haven’t dated since I got married.
Honestly, I don’t know. My eldest child doesn’t date because she’s not particularly social. But at 17 she’s old enough if she wants to. My middle child (age 13) went on two “dates,” but it’s not a priority with her. Before anyone gets their nappy in a bind over her age, the dates were school dances and all the parents were fully on board.
My son is 10. He has frequent dates with Minecraft, Plants vs Zombies, Wizard 101…
In other words, I don’t know what young people are doing. My daughters use the words “dating” when they’re referring to friends who are “dating.”
Everyone else I know is either married or living with a romantic partner.
Do people still “date,” by which you mean spend time together that isn’t a sexual event…I think so. I think they do.
I’m often glad I don’t have to date now. I hear terrible stories. Years ago, you’d meet someone, get their number, and then go out on a date.
I have a single friend who met someone at a work event. He gallantly walked her to her train, and then was annoyed that she wasn’t bringing him to her home.
Really?Same friend met a young professional, he presented himself as Catholic and everything. They were communicating about meeting up. She suggested a restaurant. He said “how about my hotel room.”
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EasterJoy
Guest
Yes. I’d say it is wise to stay out of positions where someone who is clearly wrong for you might be reasonably likely to fall in love with you or you with them. If you care about somebody as a friend and you have serious reasons not to marry them, do not do anything that could lead them on or lead them toward a proposal that you ought to reject.
I’m trying to figure out where to go to meet people. There’s no dating potential at my job and other than that, I pretty much just stay home. I’m a needs person so I generally don’t go anywhere unless I have a need to do so. I’ll be at home and can’t think of anyplace to go or anything to do so I just stay home and watch TV.What’s that old saying? You’ll never score a basket if you don’t take a shot".
How in the world do single people think they are going to find a match if they don’t ask anyone out?
That’s a real puzzler. Most everything requires action on an interested persons part. That how it works.
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Burt_Macklin
Guest
Yea, from what I see in my family most dates aren’t really planned beyond just “Netflix and chill.” It’s a really bad idea to plan hanging out alone for a period of time with no activities. My uncle is a member of a Charismatic Catholic community and the community chaperones all the dates of the young adults in their community. Not a bad little system.My kids are still too young to date, my oldest is 14, he’s a really young 14 though.
I’m often glad I don’t have to date now. I hear terrible stories. Years ago, you’d meet someone, get their number, and then go out on a date.
I have a single friend who met someone at a work event. He gallantly walked her to her train, and then was annoyed that she wasn’t bringing him to her home.
Same friend met a young professional, he presented himself as Catholic and everything. They were communicating about meeting up. She suggested a restaurant. He said “how about my hotel room.”
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marymary1975
Guest
I have to say I have a little.trouble with the word.date and its usage. The way you define.it seems to be what I thought was the usage in.USA. But when you have two people in a relationship that is exclusive,.people.refers to that as “dating”
it seems.to me that there is.no specific word in English or at least in American culture to define the concept of two people that are not.married in an exclusive relationship discerning whether they will marry. Unlike Spanish or other languages in which there is a term different.to date to denote that, I can’t find a word for.that. Maybe that is part of the issue as there is no word is more difficult for people to see a.relationship commonly called.as dating as something serious and exclusive.On a fun.note, when my now husband and I decided that we were.going to start a serious relationship I did not understand what people.mean by dating (because I also have people saying I am taking a friend as my date
) so we had to have like an hour long conversation trying to define dating practices and what it meant date and what was what we really were looking to do. It took us a while to actually make sure we were speaking the same language haha
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Xantippe
Guest
Right.
That’s one of the virtues of more traditional dating–it keeps you off the sofa (at least early on).
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Naskor
Guest
All excellent points. Our culture has become obsessed with dating and has made it seem like it is the only avenue to marriage. I think the Church needs to do more to promote other forms of courtship than dating. Right now we are at a point where more than half of all adults in America are single and more than 70 percent of young men aren’t married either. I bet it’s because of dating culture.I’ve never really dated.
My background is different from that of the typical native speaker of English, especially the typical American. I just can’t digest the idea of:
The guy saying something to the ultimate effect, through inference, of ‘let’s have a coffee/dinner/movie with some kissing in the moonlight’…
… and the woman granting that sort of request.
Which is not to say I absolutely can’t imagine myself approach a relative stranger with something like that, but in the typical dating context, this is way too casual and way too forward of an invitation and acceptance — even though I’m far more liberal with just hanging out than most well-bred Westerners are, I think.
Actually, I’ve done things no typical American would ever do, and I’m hardly ill-at-ease chatting up the ladies, and I’m even capable of being direct in speech about most subjects (probably more than the average polite Westerner), but this implicit ‘how about some kissing in the moonlight if the movie isn’t bad and both of us manage to avoid passing winds or belching in the cafeteria’ is already too explicit for me. And something I possibly might never grow to consider fully acceptable, despite being a rather well-travelled person.
Some of the people who do date, date ‘nonexclusively’. And that means having a bunch of concurrent kissing relationships, i.e. a bunch of kinda-boyfriend-and-girlfriend-but-not-really relationships, which I believe to be a form of polyamory, which is unnatural and offputting, no matter that I know how it feels to be attracted to several people at the same time, and I certainly know how it feels to converse and hang out with different women in order to compare (just not kiss etc.).
Things being as they are, and pretty much always having been so, I just don’t date. I think I’ve never been on a date, which doesn’t mean I haven’t spent time with the ladies on a one-on-one basis with some prospects of a romantic relationship.
I probably wouldn’t go on a date if the counterparty asked, either. I just have coffee, go to the cinema, have a drink etc. in polite, female company. Well, the present tense is not exactly justified here, but let’s say I used to.
I think more and more people abstain from formal dating in favour of ‘hanging out’ these days and somehow proceed from hanging out to having a relationship if they both have what it takes, which it usually doesn’t but which takes some time to discover.
A lot probably even have some sort of friends-with-benefits relationships before they even examine the emotional side in much detail, which kinda looks like sleeping with a gal or guy as a prelude to even considering if becoming a boyfriend and girlfriend would be a good idea. This means that in the general populace old reference patterns such as formal dating from just after WW2 may be out-of-date reference.
However, there is an opposite trend at play, with younger people becoming more conservative than their most recent ancestors. And that will mean less informal sex and more formal something romantic or social or whatever.
Actually, I think two technical exceptions may apply. I think a then-girlfriend and I insisted on actually calling it a date when we went to have some drinks one, in order to actually ever have had one.
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Xantippe
Guest
I would argue that it’s because of a lack of dating culture. Dating is now very uncommon in the US in the college years.
Hence the thread title, “Do People still date.”
Also, what “other forms of courtship” do you have in mind?
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Xantippe
Guest
By the way, I’d argue that organized dances (which are one of the most traditional ways for young people of meeting people) have actually functioned as a sort of high-energy, mobile speed-dating.
Naskor, I do very much suggest that you have a look at Umstattd’s piece on dating and courtship.
thomasumstattd.com/2014/08/courtship-fundamentally-flawed/
Naskor, I do very much suggest that you have a look at Umstattd’s piece on dating and courtship.
thomasumstattd.com/2014/08/courtship-fundamentally-flawed/
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pianistclare
Guest
Other forms of courtship???
Like what?
Nothing beats good old fashioned getting out in social situations and introducing yourself to a girl.
Honestly, guys tend to think they can go to a store and simple “pick a devout Catholic virgin off the shelf”.
There’s plenty of nice girls at Mass. Try going to a church function and talk one up.
Sheesh.
But you’ve still got to ask one out!
Like what?
Nothing beats good old fashioned getting out in social situations and introducing yourself to a girl.
Honestly, guys tend to think they can go to a store and simple “pick a devout Catholic virgin off the shelf”.
There’s plenty of nice girls at Mass. Try going to a church function and talk one up.
Sheesh.
But you’ve still got to ask one out!
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Naskor
Guest
Actual courtship:
scottrossonline.com/is-courtship-fatally-flawed-a-response-to-thomas-umstattd-jr/
titus2homemaker.com/2014/08/why-courtship-is-not-fundamentally-flawed/
Umstattd’s arguement that “that how your grandparents did it” isn’t true for me or my community.
His argument is also historically flawed, what he is describing has never existed. It was something that has always been desired but never practiced. :
boundless.org/relationships/2007/a-brief-history-of-courtship-and-dating-in-america-part-1
scottrossonline.com/is-courtship-fatally-flawed-a-response-to-thomas-umstattd-jr/
titus2homemaker.com/2014/08/why-courtship-is-not-fundamentally-flawed/
Umstattd’s arguement that “that how your grandparents did it” isn’t true for me or my community.
His argument is also historically flawed, what he is describing has never existed. It was something that has always been desired but never practiced. :
boundless.org/relationships/2007/a-brief-history-of-courtship-and-dating-in-america-part-1
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Xantippe
Guest
I haven’t had a chance to read your links in detail, but I think that it’s clear that a formal courtship system is not something that can work unless large numbers of people exert themselves to make it work–it’s not something that an individual or even small groups of individuals can do in isolation. Also, if the family is isolated (by geography or interpersonally), if parents are lazy about socializing, harsh to suitors, or have unreasonable standards, courtship will fail, without there being any fault on the part of the young people. (There are a lot of fundamentalist Protestant courtship families with pretty, domestic daughters that are rapidly aging out of eligibility because the families are doing the Protestant fundamentalist version of Tangled.)
It’s no accident that professional matchmakers are common in communities that do actual courtship successfully. There does need to be a go between to introduce couples, smooth ruffled feathers, mediate negotiations and moderate expectations.
I shudder to think how I would have managed if my parents had insisted on courtship and me living at home. I’d be an old maid still living with my semi-hoarder hermit parents out in the country. And it would have been even worse if my in-laws had insisted on courtship and approving my husband’s lady friends–nobody is ever good enough for FIL. shudder
If families and churches are able to provide a vibrant social environment for young people–fantastic!–but the truth is that the average young person is going to need to exert themselves and look outside their immediate social circle in order to find a good match.
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Xantippe
Guest
OK, I’m getting into your links.
Some thoughts:
- The writer at Scott Ross Online has an oldest child who is 15. So this is mostly pure theory from him. He doesn’t say that he found his wife via courtship.
- I think SR doesn’t adequately address the issue of how one finds the person one is going to court–that is the great weakness of the recent courtship revival. Most people are going to have to date in order to find someone to court.
- Speaking as a long-married lady, I think my husband and I did have a courtship but (and this is very important), that was only clear in retrospect once things were well-underway. Early on, we were just going on dates. I would argue that you don’t know if you were courting until you’re already pretty serious. One of the mistakes of the courtship movement is to believe that you can eliminate the not-clear period when the couple is getting to know each other but isn’t official yet. I think it’s a fair criticism that the not-clear period should not drag on indefinitely, but an unclear period is almost inevitable. And it looks like SR recognizes that, but what he doesn’t get is that a lot of people that have embraced the courtship idea are really doing the stuff that Umstattd criticizes. See, for instance, the Duggars. In that system, there’s not a large enough pool of prospectives, there aren’t enough opportunities for informal interaction, daddy is the gatekeeper in an unhealthy way, there aren’t enough opportunities to get to know each other without hovering relatives, there’s too much pressure on relationships from the beginning, things get serious too fast without there being low-pressure ways of getting off the Courtship Express, there’s not enough attention to compatibility, unsuitable matches are encouraged, and marriage is rushed into.
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EasterJoy
Guest
I’m a lot less concerned about defining what a “date” is than asking how to get people, especially Catholics, out from under the prevailing attitude that anyone seriously considering marriage who does not engage in some very intense physical intimacy before proposing marriage is either unrealistic or setting themselves up for “sexual incompatibility” or making themselves impossible for anyone else to live with because of the belief that people become nasty when they aren’t “getting any.”
Forget about whether or not people still date. What happened to chastity? I don’t just mean remaining virgins until marriage. I mean the whole culture of “unless you are ‘sexy’ you are dowdy and just too uptight.”
Forget about whether or not people still date. What happened to chastity? I don’t just mean remaining virgins until marriage. I mean the whole culture of “unless you are ‘sexy’ you are dowdy and just too uptight.”
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Xantippe
Guest
Here are some quick notes as to how a more supervised courtship system is described in Jane Austen’s novels:
–the parents are often aggressive about match-making (see Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice)–this is especially true of mothers who treated marrying their daughters off as virtually a full-time job
–the local community organizes dances, picnics, dinners, and other outings to throw young people together
–parents make special trips to the big city (London or Bath) or send their daughters with respectable family friends to provide their daughters more opportunities to meet eligible men
–there’s a lot of hospitality, dinner parties, and families host their grown children’s friends for long periods of time
–there’s a lot of group socializing, some opportunity for tete a tetes, a lot of walks, and a lot of freedom for engaged couples to spend time with each other (everybody assumes that Marianne is engaged because she goes for a carriage ride with Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility)
–parents care very much about making sure that the young couple has a solid economic basis for their family and will refuse their blessing and financial support if a couple doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to raise a family together
–engagements are short
Without that kind of rich social support system for supervised courtship and without very hard work by parents, supervised courtship is almost certain to fail. What makes it even more likely to fail in the contemporary US is that a lot of the parents that would like to attempt it do not have anything like that sort of rich social life–unfortunately, courtship is more likely to appeal to people who have isolated their families from the sort of social life that makes supervised courtship as a system feasible.
–the parents are often aggressive about match-making (see Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice)–this is especially true of mothers who treated marrying their daughters off as virtually a full-time job
–the local community organizes dances, picnics, dinners, and other outings to throw young people together
–parents make special trips to the big city (London or Bath) or send their daughters with respectable family friends to provide their daughters more opportunities to meet eligible men
–there’s a lot of hospitality, dinner parties, and families host their grown children’s friends for long periods of time
–there’s a lot of group socializing, some opportunity for tete a tetes, a lot of walks, and a lot of freedom for engaged couples to spend time with each other (everybody assumes that Marianne is engaged because she goes for a carriage ride with Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility)
–parents care very much about making sure that the young couple has a solid economic basis for their family and will refuse their blessing and financial support if a couple doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to raise a family together
–engagements are short
Without that kind of rich social support system for supervised courtship and without very hard work by parents, supervised courtship is almost certain to fail. What makes it even more likely to fail in the contemporary US is that a lot of the parents that would like to attempt it do not have anything like that sort of rich social life–unfortunately, courtship is more likely to appeal to people who have isolated their families from the sort of social life that makes supervised courtship as a system feasible.
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EasterJoy
Guest
There was a time when the parental duty to find a suitable spouse was taken for granted as much as our contemporary parental duty to have a child educated and, if possible, sent to college. The reasons were much the same: that is, this is how wealth and social status were preserved and sometime enhanced from one generation to the next. Education is now how parents make sure the futures of their children are “seen to,” but it used to be done by arranging favorable family alliances.
This duty did not necessarily extend to the less-affluent social classes. At those stations in life, at least one of the children might have been encouraged to stay with the parents and not marry at all. The parents would expect that child to care for them in their old age in return for the child receiving the family home when they died. Other children might be given as an apprentice to a tradesmen, found a position as a servant in a wealthy household, or highly encouraged to join a religious community.
An essentially supervised courtship is not impossible in our times. It is called avoiding near occasions of sin by conducting the courtship while sober and at times and in places where inappropriate kinds of physical intimacy aren’t attractive because of lack of privacy. There are many places a couple can have a private conversation where groping or disrobing are not options a sober person would consider!
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chevalier
Guest
I would argue that being introduced by someone else might to be better, even if you have to ask it as a favour. I say this as someone who has started conversations and obtained phone numbers on public transport.
(Back when I was young and handsome and slim and my teeth were still white and all.)It exists, but I’d say it’s a minority view, a rare condition.
I’ve never actually tried chatting up a woman in church, though some months ago I resolved I would, if the situation warranted it.There’s plenty of nice girls at Mass. Try going to a church function and talk one up.
Sheesh.
Let’s say you need to be courageous and even somewhat bold. On the other hand, I still find it too forward to openly propose something that explicitly contains discernment and implicitly contains some mushy stuff and PDA. I have no problem walking up to a stranger and complimenting her on her haircut, my default answer to ‘can you dance?’ is ‘how about I show you?’ (meaning here and now, music optional). And so on and so forth. But I still wouldn’t use the word ‘date’.But you’ve still got to ask one out!
As you know I’m dead-opposed to that kind of mentality, and yet my opposition to openly offering and accepting an explicit ‘date’ between strangers stems from the same root. I find it ungentlemanly to propose, unladylike to accept.
I’m not a fan of Victorian reenactment*. I can manage 19th century English even better than people who play that game; heck, I remember using Latin in flirtatious conversations during my ill-advised youth. Still, we are not 19th century burghers any more (if we ever were at all). But we need some good old-fashioned etiquette and politesse, if only to realize that a man and woman hanging out together without a third party acting as a chaperone and all-round wet blanket need not switch the light off and commence physical exploration, which is what people refer to as ‘getting to know each other’.
- I get creeps when I hear the word ‘courtship’ as used sometimes in these forums.
Yes, though it wasn’t explicit. You could well (still can) dance with married folks of the other sex, yourself being married or not, no matter, as well as blood relatives dancing. You could waltz with a sibling or parent, heck, even a toned-down tango would be fine. But you don’t ‘date’ a sibling or parent when you go out together somewhere. Like I said, the word is loaded and explicit.
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chevalier
Guest
Any formulaic reliving of the 19th century is doomed to fail. Socializing in mixed company — and mixed age too — is not.
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