How important is meeting family?

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A lot of books and courses I’ve seen on purity and pure romance suggest that meeting and getting to know a girl’s family, and her getting to know yours, should come before an exclusive relationship even begins.

My question is, how important is that for a guy in his late 20’s, living away from home, attending a University parish where most other folks are living away from home? My family is really just me and my dad, and my dad’s not Catholic. Lots of girls around here are from overseas, and the thought that I wouldn’t even begin ‘dating’ until we’d all met up as families just seems too difficult, it would even look odd if I was to suggest it.

I realise I’m going without a hugely important guide, but I knew that would be one of the difficulties of being a Catholic convert.

In place of a close Catholic family, what would you suggest as an aid and guide to dating?
 
DL82 said:
A lot of books and courses I’ve seen on purity and pure romance suggest that meeting and getting to know a girl’s family, and her getting to know yours, should come before an exclusive relationship even begins.

My question is, how important is that for a guy in his late 20’s, living away from home, attending a University parish where most other folks are living away from home? My family is really just me and my dad, and my dad’s not Catholic. Lots of girls around here are from overseas, and the thought that I wouldn’t even begin ‘dating’ until we’d all met up as families just seems too difficult, it would even look odd if I was to suggest it.

I realise I’m going without a hugely important guide, but I knew that would be one of the difficulties of being a Catholic convert.

In place of a close Catholic family, what would you suggest as an aid and guide to dating?
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I figure that if you are serious about your faith and your girlfriend is a Catholic that if you take her to Mass than you introducing her to your spiritual family and if you go to Mass with her you are meeting hers.
If you two have similar values I don’t see a problem, if your family is just you and your dad that’s still a family, and she will be of value to both of you.
We are all profoundly affected by our families so, when it’s possible, it’s a good idea to
meet and greet each other’s families but I honestly don’t think that’s essential to
a good relationship.
 
Just don’t fall into the trap of treating these books as the “gospel” unless they contain official church teaching. You are free to take or leave their advice as you see fit.

I used to read a lot of books like those, until I realized that all of them were just the personal opinion of the authors, and none were repeating church teaching. So what’s the point? (Very few of these “Christian Dating” books are actually Catholic anyway.)
 
Of course, you should meet one another’s families at some point. That is a part of you. However, I know “back porch courtship” is not always possible. My fiance met my family for the first time after we had known each other for two years. He had talked to my dad on the phone before then, but that isn’t the same.

Now, there are a few things you definitely need. You need to talk about your upbringing with each other – that brings depth to a relationship that can’t be reached until you realize something about what your significant other was like as a childhood, the things that affected him or her growing up. You also need mentors. Usually your family fulfills that role, but older, more mature friends nearby can fill the gap to some extent. We had a priest and a professor who each gave us a lot of advice and kept us accountable.

Of course you can’t bring home every girl you go on a date with. But once you get more serious, a plane ticket will have to be bought. I know this seems hard, but you can’t marry someone without marrying, in a sense, their family too. That means that your family has to deal with your new spouse, and your spouse has to deal with your family. I would say that before you get engaged, you should make every effort to meet one another’s families at least once.

As for the families meeting each other – that one is pretty hard in some cases. Our two families are meeting for the first time at our rehearsal dinner. Hope that goes okay!
 
I agree about meeting each other’s families at least once before engagement being very important. Your role model, when you were growing up would have been your dad and her’s was her mom. There’s a strong likelihood that something about you or she will become obvious to the other by meeting the parents. Even facial expressions, etc can easily be learned and will help you (when you start “communicating” by reading each other’s expressions). If parents are no longer living, then siblings. Besides being a cliche, but one that has been born out with experience, is that the guy will end up treating his wife like he treats his mother (or possibly like his father treats his mother) and a wife will end up treating her husband as her mother treats her father. Now, I’m not talking about the first few years of marriage necessarily, but that’s what us humans grew up seeing and we’re a predictable lot.:o
 

Yes, family meeting is important i think it would be good to meet them I’m sure they would be nice to you.​

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I think you should definitely meet the families before becoming engaged or anything like that. However, I think it’s okay to get to know her first and then maybe once you two decide that you like each other and would like to pursue something further, it would be a good idea to meet families. It’s a great way to get to know someone on a deeper level.
 
I met my husband’s family after we became engaged! The reason for that was that he is from Trinidad and I am from Ireland. We met when he was in Ireland studying.

Some months after we got engaged, while we were planning the wedding, I traveled alone to Trinidad to meet his family. The reason I went alone was - he was a student, we were saving hard to cover the wedding and honeymoon expenses, and I was an Air Hostess and so could travel from Ireland to Trinidad very cheaply.

I spent about a week in Trinidad, celebrating my birthday there, and also seeing Carnival for the first time (my birthday fell on Carnival Tuesday that year).

One thing my oldest brother told me was to find out how his father treats his mother. Well, that woman was treated like a queen by her husband!

I was, of course, nervous meeting my then fiance’s family without him there to support me, but all went well. It is important to meet your intended’s family, because you marry into a family, so need to be able, at least, to tolerate the family members, and get some idea of how they interact with each other. Marriage lasts a long time. 😃

That was forty years ago! My husband and I will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary on September 9th this year.
 
Oh Joan what a lovely story! Glad to know my DH and I aren’t doomed since we were pretty sure we headed towards marriage (not officially engaged…you know with a ring!) before I met his parents and he met my dad and stepmom. And I completely agree about learning from your partner’s family. Even from the first meeting, I learned very quickly where my husband gets most of his personality quirks, cooking style, and even his butt! 😛 - his mom! I’m so glad to have met her, she is one special woman. Plus given my parents’ divorce (& my mother’s not so healthy feelings toward my father), I’m very glad to have his parents’ example to look up to. They’ll have been married 28 years this November…even through the thick and thin, they stuck it out!
 
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