Thoughts on the Process of Dating

Let me start by saying that this is primarily a commentary on some of my thoughts on dating, not necessarily how I date. I rather enjoy dating, in its time and fashion, but I have often thought on what it could be (or consequently could not be). So the following thoughts are not my version of Joshua Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye, but rather some observations.

Dating today seems to have lost its identity. If you ask anyone what the word means, they will most likely give you some post-modern description of something between friends, friends-with-benefits, or a test-drive of marriage, which may or may not involve sex of varying degrees. Every culture has had some form of courtship with various rules and procedures of how to go about finding a spouse, but I doubt that any has had as wide a variety of styles or expectations or just plain confusion about what to do. Indeed, I would say with almost complete certainty that pursuing a definition of dating is a waste of time.

Instead, why not pursue what it could be? After all, it is here to stay, or so I imagine. For myself, dating has always had the end goal of determining whether or not I was going to marry the girl I was dating. This has always made it a more serious matter for me. I could never understand why anyone would want to be friends and call it something else. Besides, even friends have sex these days without any context of a deeper relationship, so what’s the point? Marriage is much more than just sex. It is a melding and binding of the souls of two people. It is certainly not an easy task, and it is no wonder that a marriage will only stand strong when the Lord binds it and holds it firm.

Starting with this context, then, what could dating look like? Well, it seems that it is a time for questioning and learning about the other person, and not just from the other person. Dating should get you to a point where you know the foundations of the other person, things like character, honesty, her ability to compromise, the strength of her faith, his ability to submit to authority figures and his ability to lead and manage his affairs. (Gender above is interchangable, hence the “his” in relation to submission; men must submit to authority just as much as women.) These foundations are of critical importance. The details always work out when the foundations are present and the couple irrevocably commits to one another and to the marriage. Dating, then, is a time of research and growing friendship. And, yes, you should be attracted to the person. The attraction is what draws you in the first place.

The above would lead to a situation where dating is the fact-finding, decision making time and engagement the marriage planning time. By marriage planning time, I don’t just mean the actual ceremony but also the intermingling of lives, finances, families, etc. You should know by that point that you are commited and have only the act of covenant-making before God left before you are fully husband and wife.

I could also see a scenario where the two never ever really date. A number of people find digging too much into details before engagement rather odd or distasteful. That’s certainly a possibility. Many people do not like sharing so much of themselves with another of the opposite sex for fear of giving away too much of their hearts. This is perfectly reasonable. In this scenario, the couple could completely skip dating, do the research on the foundational items, and then get engaged. While engaged, they could work out the details. I still think that engagement should be a decision already made. How, you ask? If you commit, you can always work out the details. Look back in history at the millions who were matched by others and not by choice. Many made happy homes together because they accepted that the person they had married was of good quality, and such a person is to be prized high above sometimes fun and pretty.

One further comment, and I’ll leave you to your obligatory acceptance of my thoughts… or your calling for outright abandonment of my reason. It seems to me that getting married at a younger age is in fact a much better idea than most would allow. Consider how difficult it is for older people (and by older, I mean even twent-somethings) to compromise their individual lives and grow together into a couple with another person. We have, by the time we have reached our mid-twenties, formed such an identity that we are fond of that it is most difficult to break ourselves to be formed into one being with another person. (By ‘one being’, I’m speaking of ‘dowd’, the Hebrew word that means ‘mingling of souls’ and the idea behind God making two one flesh.) When we are younger, on the other hand, we are more malleable. We have not “found ourselves” and can more easily grow up into a married couple. True, there are certainly some drawbacks, but I don’t know that we would necessarily consider them drawbacks if we were to have actually experienced it. We can only call them “drawbacks” because we don’t know if we would have turned into the same people with the same refinements we are today. (Also, I would like to point out that I am not trying to encourage younger marriages; this is merely an observation in keeping with the idea that if everything decays–as nature and the Bible would indicate is true–then perhaps we are wrong to look back to more “barbaric” ages and consider them so “barbaric. We might find, were we to venture back, that they were far more civilized than we are today. But that’s another topic for another time.)