The Church doesn’t get specific on dating. Dating is a human invention. It is not a divine institution. Marriages were arranged during Christ’s day. Historically, romantic love was seen as a form of lust that tempted married individuals to commit adultery. It was understood to promise more than it offered as the intense romantic feelings were believe to last only for a short duration. Scientifically, the experience we call being “in love” only does last 6 to 3 years. In marriage, a much deeper love must develop, and actually, (aside from countries that demean women in general), couples in arranged marriages typically experience a growth in love the longer they are married. Their attachment and feelings increase and surpass those who married for love after a few years. They also only have a 3% divorce rate. Granted, people dispute the reasons for the low divorce rate and many point to Islamic countries and countries where very young girls are married to much older men.
But the point I am trying to make is that it is our culture that teaches us how to discern marriage. There is no right or wrong way, necessarily, to do it, so long as we are not engaging in sinful behavior. Often times we look to dating as a way to get the benefits of marriage without the commitment of marriage. This could be for physical intimacy but it could also be for emotional intimacy. Even if we’re telling ourselves we just want the emotional intimacy, the temptation to physical intimacy can be strong.
I’d say it depends on what you mean by dating. If you mean going out to movies and having a fun summer as best friends, fine. If it means sharing intimate parts of yourself emotionally or physically (of which the emotional intimacy would likely lead to physical intimacy anyway even if you didn’t go all the way), than I’d say you’d be using each other.
Arranged marriages were hardly a “divine institution,” either, but I don’t think you are trying to say that they were. You are pointing out, instead, that society has been all over the map on where romantic love fits into the freedom of the sons and daughters of God. Free consent by both bride and groom are necessary for a valid marriage, and has been since the beginning (much to the chagrin of some parents, over the centuries). How they decide who to marry is not something the Church has ever specified, save that the Church holds that Catholics are only free to marry other Catholics, that they must be in a state of grace when they receive the Sacrament and try to remain in a state of grace at every moment from the baptismal font to the grave, and that they must get permission to marry outside the faith.
This friend of his seems to want to go from a basic friendship to some sort of “friendship with privileges”–not necessarily unlimited privileges even unto gross unchastity, as the slang tends to mean, but still privileges beyond a platonic friendship–but perhaps we all read her intentions wrong. Perhaps she just wants to give him the benefit of the lion’s share of her social time, with the understanding that she is very definitely NOT looking for a courtship situation that will lead to marriage.
IOW, maybe he needs to ask exactly what she is looking for. He may be worried about nothing, provided he is not concerned that he will meet someone he does want to attract into marriage at the time that he’s promised some platonic female friend that his social calendar has been blocked off for entirely platonic pursuits with her. (Yes, I can think of casual male friends that I’d consider as a serious platonic social partner in terms of time spent together that I would never encourage to think that I’d marry them. Some men just walk into your life like a long-lost brother, with the emphasis on the
brother part.) That issue ought to be discussed, too.
That is another thought: If this couple spends a certain amount of time as such a serious social item, their future spouses are never going to buy that there is not a “thing” between them, whether they ever “got romantic” in reality or not! IOW, they may be ensuring that their future spouses will never want this pair of friends to get within a mile of each other after they marry someone else. It may be better to socialize in groups of friends, so that it will be easier to convince those who need convincing that being a real couple was never on the table then, and on that account ought not to be seen as any threat to a marriage of the future.
If you want your wife and yourself to be friends with this woman and her husband in the future, should the opportunity arise, think about that. You may live to thank yourselves. You each only have to find one spouse, but few couples find more trusted friends than they know what to do with. Married people often wish they had far fewer old flames…as in, as close to zero as possible. Treat your friendships wisely, then!
To me, it is nonsensical. I don’t understand what she expects to happen; this would be an entirely different scenario if she retained the possibility of dating long distance.