I love the small of napalm in the morning.
No worries.
Thanks. :tiphat:
I meant in the sense of physical attraction. Attraction on other levels (intellectual, and so forth) is a must.
Right. But, and this is important, for some people the types of attraction you mention signify a romantic link (I tend to react that way), while for others it’s a schnellzug to the friend-zone.
Yes, but my use of the term “physical attraction” encompassed both sexual attraction and attraction surrounding appearance. I suppose it may be best to split “physical attraction” into more finely demarcated terms.
Impossible IMHO. Those just can’t be defined in any agreeable way. Pleasant looks (to them, of course) don’t always make people respond sexually, sexual attraction doesn’t always relate to physical features, any type of sexual reaction by necessity involves some chemical process in the brain, the adjective “physical” is hopelessly doomed.
It would seem that way, at least at this point. Perhaps an effort to gather all we’ve said and agree on definitions?
Not a bad idea in theory but in practice we’d end up lawyering for the closest 10 pages to come. Perhaps we could simply use precise language but avoid generalities, commonalities and other things that trigger emotions but don’t have that much substance.
Well, I have a Victorian etiquette guide right next to me, and I would say the standards are indeed different. It may seem like Victorian reconstructionism on the surface (especially the stipulation of places of meeting), but it is still different. As an aside, I think dispensing with the reservedness towards “incautious familiarity” in modern dating has seen a lot of undesirable practices emerge.
One thing that needs to be granted to fans of courting is that incautious familiarity is something they are practically guaranteed to avoid more successfully than in the more typical dating. My worry is whether they don’t perhaps fail to allow the necessary true familiarity to form, and my inclination is to think that they at least run a serious risk of doing so.
I believe in the “old-fashioned” moral because, in reality, today’s “modern” morals aren’t really that great to base anything on. Yes, many do not know about courtship, but if a young man is interested in a committed relationship, then it just takes discussion on the topic. Two adults CAN go to dinner - it involves not being seculded.
Okay, I see. I presume you mean two adults and no third. No chaperone sitting at the table. Or the table behind them. Good, that’s a relief.
For the record, under traditional etiquette, you don’t part with a woman in the middle of the town. You see her home. This is actually a rather contentious spot with modern women who may be (understandably, depending where they live) disinclined from disclosing where they live. The only way to reconcile the two positions here would be to order a taxi for the woman. Which, however, complicates things a bit because you can’t pay in advance if you don’t know the destination. And it’s not like you can negotiate with the driver about the details in front of the woman, that would be horribly declassé.
No matter how you look at it, there’s going to be a time of “seclusion”, albeit in a public place (i.e. streets, pavements etc.), on the way home unless you want to go against the old rules. Which I actually do sometimes anyway. Token compliance with the letter of old rules is a bit over the top. Which I’m trying to illustrate with this example in more ways than one.
You’re talking in generalities and code-words that you don’t feel with meaning. What do you understand “purposeless to be”?
purposeless dating is the modern look at dating. It’s just to have fun and see where things go, and has no direction.
We’re making some progress but that’s still a lot of generalities and no necessary difference between dating or courting shows!
Where I mean progress is that you clearly state your issue with the idea of justing having fun and seeing where things go. Which is something I’d like to discuss for a while. I could totally agree with you or emphatically disagree, depending on how we look at it. To wit, I’m a long-term veteran of exclusive vs non-exclusive dating debates here at the CAF. Basically, I disagree with recreational kissing, to call things their proper names. At the same time, there’s nothing wrong with investigating light-heartedly when a pleasant person of the opposite sex captures your interest. Initially, there is infinitely more of what you don’t know than what you actually know. To impose serious marriage discernment at that point, especially a formalised one, would be madness. You meet up with that person. You stroll the parks. You drain a couple of coffee cups, walk some parks, you talk. You actually converse freely, you don’t conduct negotiations filled with powerful, grave reminders in the stern language of a fundamentalist preacher. And you actually test the waters, perhaps make a pass or two, perhaps indicate your availability, see if the bait will catch, perhaps flirt a bit. And you actually do have fun in the process. And if it doesn’t work in the end, then at least you’ll have spent some time nicely, yes.
…Which is obviously different from dating all the cool bad girls or guys for the thrill of it, including people you already know you wouldn’t like to marry for the life of you. In fact, further progress is made when you more quickly weed out people you wouldn’t like to marry. But what I said about 1) fun and 2) not forcing formalised marriage discernment/negotiations at the early stages holds.
Actually, I do prefere the word discernment. It pertains to the two young people discerning God’s will in the relationhip, which is very important! And to be honst, God-centered is just what it says it is - God is the center of the relationship and your decisions are based on this center. It is not a broad term, it’s specific.
Again, I can’t read much substance out of your statements, it’s all very general. When you say courting is about discerning God’s will and dating is about having fun, it’s general like saying that monarchy is based on tradition and honour while democracy is based on the rule of not necessarily adequately prepared majority. In short, those are sweeping statements.
Would this infact be the seasons of friendhsip that lead up to the couple deciding if the friendship will be a relationship between exclusivly them, and then discerning if marriage is the proper direction, and then acting on that decision?
I always have marriage in mind, poetically you could say that I have my eyes set on the long-term goal of marriage, when I decide to approach a woman. Most of our fellow debaters here would probably be surprised with how early or in what degree of detail this can happen. But I allow myself to test waters. To chat her up a bit. To see if she responds to me. To watch her a bit. To sense her. But I don’t initiate formal proceedings. I don’t have words like “discernment”, “direction” etc. going through my brain. The very idea is scary.
By the way, a romantic relationship is
not an exclusive friendship. There’s more difference to account for. (And a non-exclusive romantic relationship is something that should not happen.)
And I don’t see “seasons of friendship” leading to some discernment of marriage at some point. For the record, the position seems to be internally contradictory because if you want to have serious marriage discernment in mind from minute 1, then you can’t actually have a friendship and only friendship. You by definition have an ulterior motive with that friendship. You can’t have a cake and eat it.
Sure, I try to develop friendship alongside, independently. But you need to do much more than appealing to my taste in women to become my friend. Or much less, depending how you look at it. Because friendship is, on the one hand, disinterested, on the other hand it can resemble being comrades in arms, especially a good, old, tested friendship has that latter flavour. A friendship needs it own course and it needs to be a friendship in its own right, as far as I go at least.
The way your proposing is a mirror to the four steps of a Godly relationship that I pointed out using Joshua Harris’s book, I kissed dating goodbye.
I don’t believe in four steps. Neither in gardening or DIY, nor in romantic relationships. Please don’t treat that guy’s memories almost like religious dogma.
A Godly relationship is a relationship that brings one closer to God, is in line with one’s vocation in life (which basically means God’s will), does not violate God’s laws in the execution or pursuit of it. And that’s pretty much it. Going into minute details, especially the farther such grounds are removed from some tangible basis in theology, loses the big picture. Which does not mean that one shouldn’t figure out such details for himself, it just means we can’t write 600 commandments of dating.
There has been a lot of talk about courtship as being a strict schedulized script. I want to discuss that real quick.
Not necessarily schedulised but a script regardless. Legalistic, kosher, laden with societal ethics of certain social circles rather than objective morality.
Let me see if I’m getting this right: The objection to courtship here is that you don’t want it to be scripted and unnatural.
Or hyped. Or filled with unnecessary exaltation. (Which can cloud reason and prevent rational thinking.)
I am not trying to claim that there is no bad dating culture, there most certainly is, I’m just trying to point out that it is not the only dating culture. I went to a Catholic college full of Catholics truly devoted to their faith and I saw many good, healthy, pure dating relationships, many of which have resulted in marriage. I have similarly been in such a relationship and am looking forward to marriage as soon as it is financially possible. My point is not to belittle the problems with many peoples methods and views of dating, or to say that one shouldn’t court, it is to try and make sure she is aware that there is another option. That not all dating is bad, purposeless, selfish, and sex-oriented. To claim that all dating is bad, as she is implicitly claiming, is very offensive to me and my friends from college, and anyone else who has been involved in healthy dating relationships. It is very good that the OP is looking for a good healthy relationship rather than a selfish, pleasure seeking relationship. I am very glad to hear that she is, but if she is going to try and explain why she wants to court instead of date she should be careful not to offend anyone she is talking to by making false claims. Currently the way she speaks about the difference between courtship and dating will end up offending good people and very possibly turn away good matches for her. I am honestly and sincerely trying to help.
But obviously, I’m not going to involve woman’s family when I don’t yet know if I’m actually willing to act on my interest. Or if I’m interested beyond merely tentative interest. That wouldn’t be in line with my concept of basic human decency. You don’t raise high hopes with people before it’s warranted.
(I prefer psuedofeminist to “radical feminist” because if all you know is that men are oppressive and evil, and that women are superior, and you haven’t read anything on feminist philosophy and you can’t describe any modern schools of feminist thought then it doesn’t matter how liberal or conservative you are, you aren’t a feminist.)
. Then again, according to my estimates, that’s a ~0.0003% chance, so nothing to worry about.
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