Taking a Chance on Love

Today’s boy-girl scene on college campuses is a mess.

Most young people don’t know how to develop satisfying relationships, and many get themselves into trouble with messy, mindless sex.

As a solution, some critics, particularly religious ones, advocate a return to the concept of courtship, where young men and women don’t date, but rather get to know each other with the explicit goal of working toward marriage.

But is shunning the institution of dating – of man and maid engaging in various activities with one another without the goal of marriage – the solution?

The latest available research suggests that one problem with today’s campus situation may be that there is not enough actual dating going on. Indeed, the recent well-publicized study by the Institute for American Values shows that college students, rather than do what one typically thinks of as "dating," tend to hang out in large groups, and then either "hook up" for commitment- and emotion-free sex (no date), or move into extremely intense relationships in which they spend almost all of their time together (closer to cohabitation than dating).

Clearly, this situation is not good. But is "courtship," with its almost monomaniacal focus upon marriage, the solution? I would suggest not, and further suggest that the answer may instead be to simply give genuine dating a chance.

Contrary to what courtship advocates suggest, one is not faced with a choice between marriage-minded courtship and aimlessly "playing the field." A good person doesn’t play the field for its own sake. He does it so he can learn more about what other people are like, and about what he wants in the way of experiences and relationships with members of the opposite sex. In short, he does it as part of his lifelong quest for self-improvement, while having some fun at the same time. Who could object to that?

The problem with kids today isn’t that they aren’t focused on marriage as a goal in dating. It’s that they’re not focused on any goals at all, in any aspect of their lives, and do all of their activities (watching TV, playing video games, etc.) with no particular purpose in mind.

Accordingly, is marriage the best goal to work toward in dealing with the opposite sex? I don’t believe so – at least not in one’s teens and early twenties.

While I was a student at Grove City College – a strict conservative school, which to its great credit offers serious-minded students an opportunity to study without being surrounded by the distractions of sex, drugs and alcohol – I had an opportunity to watch for four years the sort of marriage mania courtship that its fans advocate, and found it depressing.

In that setting, I observed the same thing again and again: a couple meets in their freshman or sophomore year, they spend a lot of time with one another and become emotionally attached, and at the end of four years, marriage.

Disgusting.

Here we have young men and women who have spent their entire lives under the close watch of either their parents, or their school acting in loco parentis, and now they’re going to commit the rest of their lives to a spouse, immediately taking upon themselves all of the limitations associated with marriage.

Not that there’s anything wrong with marriage per se. But the belief system of these individuals is such that they can’t do anything with a member of the opposite sex without focusing on the goal of eternal commitment. This results in their getting married without having an opportunity to learn more about themselves, and life and living generally, at least not independent of the influence of their parents or friends.

I doubt anyone would find it outrageous to opine that the more experiences one has had, and the more he has learned about himself and about life, the more value he will bring to his relationships. Given that, along with the biological reality that young people will want some manner of relationships with members of the opposite sex, do we really want to push them into pairings that are commitment-minded, when they haven’t yet had the opportunity to develop on their own?

Many people pursuing the courtship route do so out of a religious belief that God has chosen "the one" for them, and as long as they continue praying as they go along and feel like they’re doing the right thing, all will work out for the best. That could be, but I’d like to think that God generally appreciates healthy doses of common sense and rational analysis, detached from any emotions one may be feeling in a given moment.

As a result of their focus on marriage and their aversion to less serious dating, the courtship folks tend to invest their emotions heavily into their relationships, and cling fiercely to the notion that there is "one perfect person" out there for them. Thus, if they begin to wonder if perhaps they should go out and "play the field," or feel less than fully satisfied in any other way, they don’t feel free to act on these feelings, and instead rationalize their way around these problems, thus remaining in their unsatisfying marriage-minded relationship, possibly for life.

Of course, if some who have tried courtship now find themselves in happy and fulfilling marriages, then that, certainly, is all that counts, as far as they’re concerned.

But the rest of us need not consider ourselves "evil" or feel in any way ashamed for enjoying the company of the opposite sex without the goal of marriage necessarily in mind. Certainly we should not cheat ourselves – and our eventual mates – out of countless opportunities to become better, healthier, happier people than we might otherwise be.

September 13, 2002

J. H. Huebert's [send him mail] website is www.jhhuebert.com.

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