This is exactly why exclusive dating is problematic–especially for those who are too young to realistically consider marriage.
The difference in dating styles makes a real difference. With non-exclusive dating, chastity is protected, emotions are protected, and there are no serial breakups (i.e. training for divorce.)
There is a reason why I use the pronoun “one”. I have no wish to judge invidual persons and I will not go there. I want to discuss ideas, not to judge people. You stand on the position that having multiple male-female relationships of a more than just brother-sister or casual friends nature is proper, even preferable.
Chaste is not synonymous with romantic but if something can be described as chaste it doesn’t mean that the word “chaste” includes the whole activity. In brief, love between spouses is chaste and may well be romantic – had better be. Love between engaged couple can be both chaste and romantic. Romantic is what pertains to love, which does not presuppose any sexual activity, even if erotic love naturally desires fruition which can only be found in marriage and in a sexual way. Amusing oneself with gesture pertaining to love, even if sexual desire isn’t part of it, is not exactly the first thing that comes to my mind when I read “chaste”.
Show me where I said that. I can show you where I specifically said that it was normal for friends to hold hands and in some culture it was also normal for friends to kiss on the mouth. However, in our culture, friends don’t always kiss on the cheek (more common in continental Europe than the UK or US) and practically never on the mouth. It’s still possible and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. But what counts is the motive. The motive behind kissing a date is different from the motive behind kissing a friend. A friend is not kissed because he’s attractive and we’re having an affair with him, however chaste we may believe our affair to be. People who kiss because they are sexually attractive to each other and build a bond between themselves are lovers.
Your timeline is irrelevant. You said I implied it was seeing two or three guys on one day. I asked, what difference does it make if on the same day or the same week? It’s still two guys simultaneously. Please don’t drive me into judging invidual persons’ behaviour. We are discussing ideas here.
A meeting between a man and a woman which is potentially romantic and potentially sexual (in the strict or broad sense – broad sense being related to the sexual but not immediately genital sphere), a part of match-making process. I have no problem with it so long as it’s just friends. I have a problem when the people turn into lovers, enjoying the signs of something they can’t even claim to share, for mere fun alone. I have a problem when they claim they are in love with multiple people and instead of choosing one and sticking to friends with the rest, they allow themselves pretastes and try-before-buy, building vain relationships and defying the natural order in which God created them man and woman and not men and woman or man and women or men and women.
Not a single actual number. Numbers came from me as an example. You seem to believe that many is wrong but just a few is all right. At any rate, you seem to claim that I claim that it was kissing half the town, which it wasn’t. I ask, if it’s so chaste, then what difference does it make between two guys and a hundred?
Gasp If kissing is so chaste, then why not allow it between homosexuals? First, love, according to you, doesn’t need to lead to marriage. That homosexuals can’t marry shouldn’t matter. Next, you say that only genital acts are sexual and only sexual things are wrong in romance. So if it doesn’t matter that homosexual partners can’t marry and if their kissing isn’t sexual, how can you claim it’s unchaste? Or maybe men and women are allowed to kiss for fun but two men or two women are not? Do we have different standards of chastity than they have?
You are getting me wrong. I specifically said it was normal for friends to kiss, even on the mouth, for a friendly motive. Romantic kissing is based on sexual attractivity and is more than just friends. The motive is different and much more sexual. I repeat my question: if it’s so chaste and friendly and simply social, then why not date and kiss men when you are already married? Come on, it’s just friends and it’s chaste! At least according to you, not according to me.
If it’s so chaste and completely not sexual, why not keep doing the same after marriage? Why not have a couple of no sex but just simple chaste kissing lovers for the fun of it? Just chaste dating, you know.
In my eyes, they have much more authority than people who claim that restricted levels of polygamy are the newly discovered right way by which Christians should abide and anything else is unchaste and deeply wrong. Show me a single Church document giving a yes to “chaste” romance with multiple people at the same time.
Playing with feelings and experimenting with other people in order to avoid one’s own personal hurts at the expense of others, while also playing with the sexual sphere of human existence for one’s own mere enjoyment is in the very least venial. Teaching it to children is something I see as potentially mortal. Creating feelings of love which are not compatible with one another as erotic love is exclusively between one man and one woman and is indivisible, is in the very least irresponsible and imprudent as one can’t obviously continue all of them and so all of them except one are doomed from start.
Because it’s supposed to. Familiarity with someone of the opposite gender in the male-female way naturally wants sexual fulfilment in marriage.
No serial break-ups? Do you mean that people aren’t dumped if they no longer meet requirements? I’m telling you: those non-exclusive relationships are interrupted even more often than exclusive ones and there are more of them to interrupt. Serial? It’s serial all the way. Even worse. It’s rotation. Rotation is good for a stable, not for a human society. Is having a rotation better than “serial break-ups”? You call exclusive relationships training for divorce. But are not the non-exclusive ones trainining for divorce all the same if break-ups are a natural part of it? It’s training for more than divorce, but for having affairs and cheating. It’s a natural training for polygamy. And polygamous divorce, of course.
It is interesting that you are an adherent to the idea that marriage is a matter of “finding the one right person.” Where did you get this idea, that there is a “one right person”, or if there is, that it is your job to go find her, let alone that this quest is a “natural process in a human”? Where did you get the idea that “love” is a pre-requisite to marriage, rather than a duty or a fruit of marriage? To be blunt, this does not sound like you.
As for lust, the lust to be right is the most prevalent on our board. We need to be wary of it.
That’s the same I’ve been tempted to say about the way you present what I say, but I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know what you consider a productive manner, but it seems that it essentially means me agreeing with your views or with the idea they are as good as mine and giving it a rest. That isn’t going to happen.
And I am the judgemental one? Please show me the “evidence”.
One right, one best… one right in your circumstances, not a soulmate theory with one soul waiting for you in the whole universe – even if one could find some support for that, anyway. But that’s besides the point. Finding a good person for marriage is a natural process for a human, there’s no doubt here, except some liberals might wish to reduce it to looking around for a mate to pass genes with. Romance or love is not prerequisite for marriage, but when such things happen, they are to lead to marriage. There is a reason why they exist and that reason is not enjoyment.
Nah, we have some arranged marriages in the Bible, but it’s not like everyone marries for economical or political reasons, laughs cynically at the idea of love and treats sex as chore and duty. How about the Song of Songs?
Of course. Because he was talking to married people about things pertaining to marriage.
And where does the relationship come from? Does it magically appear at the moment of exchanging vows?
Of course. But he doesn’t say that you can go ahead kissing a couple of girls and telling them sweet things to find out the most compatible one.
Exactly. And charity is the only kind of love which isn’t exclusive. The other is erotic love and that one is exclusive. Romantic dating with kissing isn’t quite charity, is it? It relies on romance. If it were as you said, just getting to know people and finding ones with desired qualities, it would be strictly friends (i.e. how I do it). But, somehow, it has to be romance. With kissing, holding hands and whispering sweet nothings. Why?
First off, to consider something other than romance as the basis for marriage is* not* cynical. Romance does not need to lead to marriage. How could that be? Of course you don’t believe that. What happens when you feel the greatest romance of your life after you marry? What then? These things do happen in the absence of exchanged kisses, you know. You really ought to read The Screwtape Letters some time.
Well said… and I will take your advice, too. Thank you!
I can. Perhaps these questions and issues are not important to you, but to me and to others these questions are of great importance. This is more than a discussion about kissing, or holding hands, or saying romantic things. These are ultimately questions about what it means to love, what it means to be a man, a woman, and what it means for man and woman to relate to each other. These are questions about what romantic love is, and what romantic love can show us about who God is and how he relates to us.
Might I encourage you to start a new thread? There are plenty of people who* think* they already know what this one is about that might skip your discussion.