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The Four Moms: Life in a Shoe,, Smockity Frocks, Raising Olives, and Me
We are talking about dating and courtship. This is going to be interesting, because I do not actually know what the other three moms believe and practice in this area. I have a really safe guess that at least one of them is like us, because this topic showed up on our shared list of topics, and I am not the one who put it there. I have a reasonably strong guess about a second mom, but it actually is just a guess, but absolutely no clue about the third.
Anyway, this is a big topic, so I should stop beating around the bush and get to it.
We have seven progeny. That’s kids, children, offspring, fruit of the womb.
Six girls, one boy. The oldest is 29, the youngest is now (drum roll, please, FOURTEEN YEARS OLD).
Two of our daughters are married, they each have two children. Their first kiss was at their wedding when their respective grooms heard those lovely words “You may kiss the bride.”
We have one ‘failed’ courtship with one of our daughters and a young man who is the cousin of one of our sons-in-laws. That is sad.
My husband and I did not grow up this way. We were both promiscuous daters, addicted to serial romance. I frequently was ‘going steady’ with two boys at a time, I never broke up with one until I had the next one all nicely lined up, and one exhausting season I was ‘going with’ three boys at the same time and trying to keep two of them in the dark about the others (one of them knew, which made my task a bit easier as he helped me keep the secret). I have had a couple of men I knew as teen-aged boys contact me via my real name Facebook and tell me they were old boyfriends,that we had dated for a few months when we were fifteen, or seventeen, or fourteen (I wasn’t allowed to date before 16, but I did). I remembered their names and knew we went to high school together. I don’t remember going out with them at all, but it’s all too possible that I did and I forgot. This is not an experience I enjoy. I once ended up living next door to a young man, I had supposedly known when we were in high school- we both were married and had kids, we lived in Japan on a military base. I did not remember him at all. He most definitely remembered me. That was….. awkward, a word which here means so humiliating I wanted to die. He thought it was hilarious. The thing is, we’d lived next door for a year and his wife and I were best friends before it came out that we’d spent our high school years about five miles apart. We were all playing cards together and talking about where we’d grown up, and he said Gila Bend, and I said “Wow, really? I was in Yuma,” and he did a double take and said ‘wait a minute…. cruise nights… Burger King…. you are _____________, and he gave my full first, middle, and maiden name. It’s not like I could click a button and cut him out of my life. We babysat each other’s kids for date nights. For the rest of the year he would look at me and shake his head just to watch me cringe and blush. I hated that.
So the whole idea of courtship was utterly foreign to us and more than a little, well, terrifying.
On the other hand, the thought of our beloved children going through even half of what we had gone through, or putting somebody else through what we put others through, or just repeating the mistakes of a single week of my high school career- well, that was even more terrifying. We spent about 8 years being terrified of that possible future, because it felt inevitable, like a train wreck that we could see coming but could not escape, and then we heard of courtship, and while it was definitely odd, it was even more like a life preserver thrown to drowning parents on stormy seas. I do love me my mixed metaphors.
We do know many, many people who did the dating thing and it all went just fine. This is not the ONLY way to handle this stage in life. It’s just the way we’ve chosen.
I have blogged about this before, and you should really read that post if you want to know more about it. I’ll share some links to those other posts at the end of this one. Meanwhile, for this post, I solicited questions via Facebook. Here they are:
Q. Hmm…. how do we promote a way for young adults to meet?
A. Pray about it. Visit other churches. Attend church functions and activities (we don’t like the strictly for young people ones, but we do like ones with a wide range of ages and are inclusive of families.) Be hospitable. Trust God.
Many, many years ago we lived in a tiny town in Nebraska and babysat the two boys of a single mom. One of the boys was 13. Our oldest girls were 12 and 10. Somebody asked me once what I thought of that 13 year old boy as a potential son in law. I laughed. And then I said, “No. Way.” We moved. we moved again, and again, and again. He grew up, dated other girls, moved, left his faith, was a bit of a mess, joined the Army, went to Iraq and got at shot at and buried some friends, came back to the states, began to straighten out his life, and he came to see us a few times because my husband was a mentor to him. And then he came a few more times and I told my husband, “he’s coming for one of the girls, and if this is not okay, you need to stop it now,” and it was okay and now he is our Shasta, and the father of two of our grandbabies- the Dread Pirate Grasshopper and his sister the Ladybug.
Q. I hear a lot about courtship on the girls’ end of things. What about sons? What is their role in the process? How involved are his parents? How can we help prepare them? (And I know you are not there yet, but I’d like to hear your thoughts.)
A. I have realized this year that we should have been doing way more than we have been, and I am not really sure about this. I’m going to have to think some more and come back to this later.
Our son has suddenly become very popular with girls and it kind of caught me blindsided. Two years ago we went to our regular summer family camp and not a single girl paid attention to him and he did not care. Then he had that amazing growth spurt and last year at camp he went everywhere with a crowd of giggling girls following him, surrounding him, tittering over every word that fell from his lips, and drawing on his hands and arms. Some of those girls are two years older than he is. His sisters were all shocked, and kept coming up to ask us if we were watching. We were, but it was kind of a deer in the headlights look.
I discovered that we had spent much time successfully teaching our girls not to be forward, brash, and boy crazy, but we had not spent any time at all telling him how to respond to forward, brash, and boy-crazy girls. Instead of fleeing like Joseph, he came back to our cabin during the day to put on deodorant. If you have adolescent sons you understand the significance of that. So we’ve spent more time this year gently and subtly talking about little rules like, “YOU DO NOT LET GIRLS DRAW ON YOU” and “SHINY IS NOT A GOOD CRITERIA.”
Q. How do you begin introducing the idea at a young age so that it’s natural by dating age? I never grew up this way so it’s still a new/unnatural concept for me.
A. When we watched movies and somebody kissed, we talked about how we thought it was better to wait for marriage for that. When we watched movies and somebody dated, we talked about how dating should be within the family so you could get to know everybody. When others would talk about being able to date at 16, we said we would allow dating after marriage. When we shared stories about how we met and married, we would generally conclude with, “And that’s why our kids are never going to date.”
You just talk about it- a lot. Also study other cultures where arranged marriages are the norm and this helps supply some perspective. Dating is the norm for our culture and time, but it’s still a very new practice. People have done this differently other places and other times, and dating is so very, very recent and so very, very western that it obviously cannot be required, and it’s bizarre that it’s considered weird that you don’t date.
Q. This is a very foreign concept to me, but I understand it and respect it. Homeschooling helps obviously, to curb the craziness that you have no control over in public schools. But how do you deal with crushes and flirting that inevitably happen at a young age? I know a certain 9 year old who is no stranger to boys. I’d like to hear how you handle the courtship issue with boys. I have one of those too 
A. personality does play a role, and you do have to respect that. But here are some of the things we did-
We talked about how it might not be possible to stop yourself from liking a boy, but that it was possible to control your eyes and your behavior, and that it was good practice to work on controlling your heart.
We watched Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and talked about them. These are excellent documentary for proper girl/boy relationships.=)
We just told our kids that we were not going to do flirting and silliness like that until they were old enough to follow through on it with marriage. That it was a waste of time when they were young.
We did not tease them about boys (or girls). We did try to focus on traits rather than looks- If somebody else said so-and-so was cute, we would respond with things like, “I like how that boy is always so good to his mother. I like the way that boy always notices when an elderly lady needs help and jumps up to help her.”
At some point (I really don’t know when) we did talk about how flirting was a bad habit because it was not okay to flirt after marriage, but if you flirted a lot before marriage, it was hard to stop.
Q. How did you got your extended family who thought you were nuts on board?
I don’t think they ever have been on board, but we do not have a huge extended family, and we deliberately cultivate a demeanor of being stubborn and inflexible so they eventually leave us alone about these counter-cultural issues.
Q. How did you raise your children up with the idea? How did you talk about it with as small children, “big kids” and then teens? How were you able to recognize who God chose for them? (all of these questions related to Courting not dating as is typically done in today’s society)
We just did- we looked for opportunities, we talked about it just about any time an example came up.
We don’t really believe that there is only one person in the whole world that is the right person for you. We believe that two Christians of strong faith and commitment really can make almost any relationship work, given some basic compatibility issues. We did encourage lots of opportunities to just get to know a wide range of friends, and talked about what sorts of traits and ideas are most important.
Q. How did your family come to “buy in” to the idea? … my husband doesn’t like the dating model, but I think the idea of courting is too strange for him too. I’m happy to follow his lead, just don’t think he knows where to lead us to. 
We knew the dating model was just not for us. We read different things about courtship, listened to some tapes, the kids listened with us, we talked about it. We realize that probably most of our kids could handle dating far better than we did, but it just was not a chance we wanted to take.
Q. Yes, please, if you can, explain how you get/keep your girls on board. Our extended family seems to have a plethera of young, unwed mothers the last couple of years. So, it seems that I really have a lot of influence to overcome.
It hasn’t been hard at all. We have seen some failed relationships in extended family and friends, and that has actually helped. Our girls don’t enjoy the drama, turmoil, and hurt feelings second hand, they do not want to go through it first-hand.*
Really- you just have to talk to your kids. Explain why one thing bothers you and the alternative is better to you. Don’t talk AT them, talk with and to them.
Here are some quotes from previous related posts:
You will have certain ideas and plans, and things will happen that will change them. Relationships are more important than your pet issues.
You will make some compromises and accept some things you once thought you wouldn’t- at least, if relationships are more important to you than preferences. And it is important to distinguish that difference between preferences and convictions. It’s also important to recognize when it is necessary or at least acceptable to impose your convictions on children and when it’s necessary and important to back off and let them form and live with their own convictions. Nobody else can figure these things out for you, either. Older mothers can share specifics of our families, and we can share principles and personal details- but the details for your family will have to be worked out in, by, and with your family.
‘courtship’ isn’t the goal, it is a means to an end,and there is no planned bridge burning on the path we have laid out toward that end. If any our adult children said, “Look, we think you’re NUTS and we are NOT doing this,” well, we’d be a little sad and disappointed or greatly so, depending on the attitude and alternative choices involved, but we would maintain our relationship over our preference for Courtship, because, frankly, we prefer our kids over our philosophy.
Also, there is no single vision of courtship that is the One Right Way, just as there are other ways of dating and mating that work for other people.
Just as each of our children are individuals, so each of the young men who expresses an interest in them is an individual, and the combination is yet another incredibly unique and personal reality, and so we treat it as such.
Jonathan Lindval tends to be one of those polarizing names in homeschooling circles. People tend to love him or loathe him. We do not agree with everything he says, and we would not go quite so far as he does in his teachings on courtship, but sometimes it’s helpful to scrape the ground clean of all your reconceptions and rebuild from scratch. He will help you do that.
As you know, we are really weird:
We do consider typical North American dating to be a recipe for romantic disaster- serial romance, recreational dating (especially in your teens)- we do not find these things compatible with our family’s views. They seem to us to promote a shallow, buffet table view of romance and coupling, and produce a series of broken hearts, each break getting easier as the heart grows more protective of itself. That’s how we feel about OUR family and OUR Progeny. We do not sit around discussing the ‘failings’ of those who have a different approach.
Do not let your most fondly cherished hopes and dreams for how your child’s marriage will happen (and believe me, we are as conservative here as you could possibly imagine, and we would be heartbroken under these circumstances) come between you and your adult Progeny, whether they share those hopes and dreams or crush them under foot.
I have conservative views on mating, dating (we don’t believe in it) and courtship, views shared by my husband and our Progeny- but those views are not more important to us than our children themselves.
All my views of purity in the world will not matter a fig if I conduct a slash and burn policy towards a wayward child and use my convictions as an axe against the root of our relationship in such a way as to drive my adult son or daughter away from me and into the arms of any waiting other, nor will it impress God or anybody else if I voice those convictions, no matter how pleasing to God the convictions themselves may be, in such fashion as to poison any future relationships with unsaved in-laws and grandchildren.
Whether you follow the dating model or the courtship model or something totally different, you have to teach your kids some deeper principles. Things like:God is not their vending machine.
We need to teach our children to guard their hearts precisely because emotions are powerful, can be intoxicating, and are not the best guidelines.
And somehow we need to make it clear to them that it’s not always easy, but doing the right thing rarely is the easiest path, and that very few people are really immune from the attractions of lust, especially young people.
I feel like this is rather disjointed, but I think that’s because I know I am supposed to be writing about courtship, and I really want to tell you that what matters most is relationships with your kids. Don’t build walls, build bridges.
courtship has been a bridge for us, not a wall, at least not with the people who count. I have seen it used as a wall by others. You can do that with anything, really.
* I also want to clarify something about the drama and turmoil they’ve watched when friends and family have gone through failed relationships based on a different standard than ours- in most cases they have seen this for what it is- a waste of time. A friend of mine says she realized as an adult that no man under 30 was worth crying over. I would put it a little younger than that, but definitely, no 16 year old boy (or girl) is worth breaking your heart over unless you’re the parent.
Do they have to learn to deal with pain and sadness and heart-ache anyway? Yes, of course, but I guarantee you that dating is not the only way to be confronted with the fact that we live in a dreadfully fallen world that will break your heart, crush your soul, and drive you to your knees. If dating was that necessary to our wellbeing, well, then the world would have discovered it before 1920.
42 Comments
Can’t wait to see what the other moms have to say, but since you’re the only one (I’m pretty sure) who has seen any children safely through to marriage, I think I’ll weight your advice a just little more heavily. I’m thinking a thorough study of Proverbs for my boys when they’re about 15 ought to take care of a lot of the problems with forward girls.
The teen years make me nervous, but I think if I just avoid doing what my parents did (neglect) on the one hand, and locking them in closets until we’ve arranged their marriages on the other, we should be ok.
May want to make that study happen around 13! Girls mature earlier in this area than boys supposedly and can be quite forward even before boys are ready. Love the idea though!
I so agree- girls can be really pushy and actually awaken interest sooner than parents were prepared for.
Wow, what a great post. I loved what you had to say about keeping our relationships with our children. Thanks so much for taking the time to write this.
Good thinking.
I am a limited-dating advocate as I see that living in the World also means that we will experience heartbreak and disappointment at some point in our lives; learning how to deal with it now with the support of parent, Pastors, and friends now can save some pretty big shocks later.
Too many parents wrap their kids up in bubble wrap and park the helicopter overhead when they need to skid, fall, get scraped up, heal and do it all over again.
You know what? We’ve experienced plenty of real world heartache and disappointment from other sources. Dating is not the only way to gain this ‘valuable’ experience.
Nor is courtship necessarily bubblewrap or helicopter parenting, though it can be. But I know helicopter parents whose kids date, too. Those are very separate issues.
Our view is very similar to yours. We haven’t had this view for our entire married life, but we knew we didn’t want them dating. Last year, at the age of 18, our oldest son went through a brief courtship and engagement and was married. Several could not believe that we were letting out 18yo son get married. However, he was very well prepared. From an early age we taught him how to work and work hard. By 16 he was working for a local construction business and impressed the owner so much that he is now being trained for his own crew. At 17 he worked full time and finished his last year of high school at night. In June, right after his 18th birthday he asked to court our now daughter-in-law. By the end of August they were engaged and 6 weeks later, married. We have been good friends with the family for a couple of years, so that made things a bit easier.
All courtships are successful even if they don’t result in marriage, and hearts can still be broken, but in a way that is so different than dating. After watching the process with our son, our other children feel even more committed to courtship. So the more a family surrounds themselves with likemind families, the more courtship will feel like the norm.
This is a great post and I am enjoying looking through your other links too. Thank you for sharing from your experiences! It was nice to read how you used to be but how you’ve still had success in doing things differently for your children. It gives me hope!
Also, we lived in El Centro for a while. When we moved there people used to say, “Oh you’re gonna love San Diego.” Uh, yeah, San Diego is beautiful. El Centro is not in San Diego. lol
I think our orthodontist was in El Centro.=) There was a fabulous hole in the wall Mexican restaurant called La Paloma.
I really appreciate your balanced approach here. Having grown up in the most conservative of homeschooling circles, my husband and I and many of our long-term friends either courted, or defied their parents to get married. Now we’re all edging into middle age with children edging into upper elementary and starting to look at this from the other side. (Most of the marriages turned out fine, by the way, even the ones who ran away. Some of the strict courtship ones didn’t.)
I don’t know anybody who wants to repeat “courtship” with our kids the way it was presented to us. Especially when it came to the amount our parents felt they had the right and duty to interfere and direct our relationships as twenty-something adults who were ready and desiring to marry. However, I’ve met very few who feel like they missed out on something by not having the kind of serial relationships you describe in high school.
I think the middle ground we will probably aim for with our kids is encouraging them to wait on romantic relationships until they are reasonably close to pursuing marriage, and to treat other people with respect and kindness, but encouraging them to make their own choices and set their own boundaries as adults. I do feel that, even though well-intentioned, our parents’ direction and involvement in our courtship was harmful to our relationship in that we were doing what our parents wanted instead of learning to make decisions together. This was not a healthy way to prepare for making decisions as a married couple.
That is really interesting, Queen of Carrots. I do think most of the problems with dating can be solved if dating just isn’t allowed until around 18, with lots of discussion and teaching.
One of the things we like to do is ask our courting couples to pick a project to work on together (sometimes we haven’t asked, because they are doing this already)- we don’t really care that much what the project is, and we are not involved in the details after that. The reason is to give them the opportunity to work alongside each other and make decisions together. This was a contributing factor to the failure of the 3rd relationship- it turned out that our young man had a tremendous work ethic when it came to a job, but when it came to relationships he was really not interested in anything that wasn’t all circuses and ponies. And I suppose another commenter is correct- that it wasn’t truly a failure, it was good to discover this before a marriage instead of afterwards.
We also did not *require* the first kiss be at the alter. We said something like this, “This is our preference, and it’s a strong preference because we think it’s good discipline, not to mention charming. However, we also get that it might be really embarrassing and feel awkward to have your first kiss in public in front of all your friends and family. So it’s up to you, and we won’t even ask.” And it was really hard to keep to my promise not to ask, but I did it, so I was not sure if it really was their first kiss until after they were married- in one case, over a year after they were married.=)
I appreciate both of those, especially the kissing one. (It didn’t bother me particularly, but I know lots of people it really did, and honestly the whole thing was elevated to a ridiculous degree.)
I did feel like the trouble with courtship, from my perspective and looking back now, was at a more fundamental level. We had done projects together and were good at working together at a practical level–that was why we wanted to get married. But courtship made any relationship or interest we might have in each other suspect until it was thoroughly approved by the parents–which, in turn, left our relationship and lifestyle choices always feeling secondary to our parents’ choices. It’s taken me years of marriage to become OK with my husband just doing things differently than my dad does. (And my dad is not at all authoritarian or controlling.) Or to speak up if I have a different idea. (And I am not at all naturally a wallflower.)
I’m sure it’s possible to practice courtship and still have an effective leaving and cleaving, but it’s definitely a significant challenge that needs to be faced head-on.
I don’t want to really disagree, because I have definitely seen pro courtship parents behave in ways that appall me and parents do have to guard against authoritarianism and being control freaks. I also realize it’s difficult to convey meaning with precision via short blog posts and comments.
So maybe I am way off base here- it’s just that I do not really see that some of what you see as a courtship problem would have been much different with a different approach. Marriage is always a big adjustment. My husband took years to be okay with me not doing things like his grandmother (who raised him)- and she was totally uninvolved in his life at the time we met (I met her after we’d been married several months) and had never been an *authority* figure- he was only ever punished once, for making a mess. Shoplifting and buying hard liquor at 13? That just merited weeping and hand-wringing.
And there were many things I expected my husband to do the way my dad did them, and was frustrated or disappointed that he didn’t- even though I couldn’t stand my dad and had fled from home to elope with my husband and escape the toxicity.
No matter what path you take to get marriage, the way your parents did marriage, chores, organizing, grocery shopping, television watching, bought a dishwasher, picked a book, played a game, watched T.V. (or didn’t), even washed the dishes- this is what you know, and often take for granted as ‘the way’ to do it. It’s the best fit for you because you grew up that way, so it’s comfortable- and *right*. After 29 years- I still can’t clean a room or unload a grocery cart with my husband. It drives me nuts. And the mother of one of my sons-in-law, who has been married ten years longer than I, says the same thing- she has to leave the room if her husband is going to do certain helpful tasks.
Marriage is always a bit of a cross cultural experience, no matter who you marry or how. It’s just that we often take it for granted that marriage will be a smooth transition because the other person is the same color and went to the same church as we did- or because we got married the ‘right’ way- whether that be dating, courting, or arranged marriages.
Hmm. I feel a blog post coming on. Or maybe I already wrote one.=)
And it’s often the smallest things that are the biggest hurdles (let me tell you some time about my feelings over creamy peanut butter).
I agree. Our family and my son’s in-law’s family are very similar in doctrine and many family beliefs. Yet we come from a very Dutch background, while they come from a very Virginia/southern background. They both have had to give a bit and compromise and this has helped them grow as a couple.
I get what you are saying, and of course one never knows how things would be otherwise. But I was quite prepared for the different-ways-of-doing-things (my mother had a great story about the uncle who criticized his wife’s canned peaches because she layered them neatly instead of just dumping them in like Grandma’s). I’m talking about something deeper–a sense that we still needed to be angling for their approval that I only finally recognized in the last year or so, and that I can’t see a cause for either in the way they treated him once “approved” (actually my father–my mother died abruptly during pre-courtship), or in my pre-existing relationship with my parents, which had been quite good.
Perhaps the courtship advocates would say that was because we did it wrong in the first place. (We hadn’t breathed a word of romantic interest to each other, but I had long had my mind made up.) But that was the thing about courtship–there were so many, many ways to get it wrong. (Looking back, I still can’t see an alternative–we lived far apart, he had no opportunity to get to know my parents informally and I can’t help that I *knew* when I did. I was definitely not looking for it–it just hit me like a ton of bricks.) Real lives don’t follow a script. But if the script is held up as holiness–it casts a lot of false guilt if you deviate.
I read recently someone talking about how she and her husband had *decided* to save their first kiss for the wedding. And that was when I realized–we hadn’t decided that. We knew it was what we were supposed to do. We didn’t even talk about it. We knew what the *right* answers were to the questions, so we didn’t talk about how we really felt (after five years and four kids he finally mentioned that he would really have liked to wait a bit on kids, and after I’d dumped my career two thousand miles behind me I finally acknowledged that actually I really loved my work and wished we’d found a way to accommodate it).
And I know, I know, everybody grows and changes and makes decisions that later on they wish they’d done differently. But courtship doesn’t really allow for that–all those lists parents are to grill suitors on about what they believe on subjects X, Y, and Z–well, over the next ten or twenty years, some of those opinions are likely to change. What does that mean for the couple if the parents granted their approval based on those answers? (And if it doesn’t matter–why do they have the right to ask those questions?)
Again, I’m sure there are ways to do courtship that don’t raise these issues and I don’t think it’s all bad. I am very grateful for being taught to save romantic feelings for something special, to proceed with respect and caution and to look for bigger things than fluttery feelings (and I totally agree with the usefulness of great literature in this regard!) It’s just that, looking back, and even though my parents really did mean well and did not do any of the things that terrified me in some of my friends’ courtships, I don’t see what their approval and direction added to our relationship–we knew where we were going and at some point we needed to start setting that course ourselves. I suspect it would have been better to do that sooner rather than later. Anyway, it was unpleasant enough that I’d rather not risk putting my children through it.
I find it unhelpful to lump ‘The courtship advocates’ together as one hostile group that would decide any issues you have are because you did it wrong. I have tried very hard not to group all those who date together in one monolithic group. We are individuals. And I am a courtship advocate, and that isn’t what I would say. Nor can I agree that the thing about courtship is that were so many ways to get it wrong. I realize that apparently that’s what it looked like at your house, and I agree that there are people like that- but that totally is *not* an accurate description of what it means to us or to most of those we know who prefer courting over dating. It’s not a formula. There are no formulae. But there is history.
It’s interesting to me just how limited a history and geography there is for the idea that parents really have nothing to say about this.
When the Striderling was in the NICU, there was an Indian family there. They had preemie twins. The couple had been married for 20 years. The first time they met was on their wedding day. They were deeply devoted to one another, very much in love, and a joy to watch (from under our eyelashes) as they tenderly cared for each other and their twins. A busy body nurse asked them how they met and was shocked when she found out. She asked them if they would follow the western method or the eastern when it came time for the twins to marry- she obviously assumed they would be in favor of letting the kids make their own choices. But no- they were adamant that they would choose exactly what they had- arranged marriage. They thought it was far more successful than letting hormonal young people choose (and statistics do support them on this). the nurse was shocked, and argued with them (which I thought was arrogant) about how much better dating and choosing for themselves would be. But they were serenely confident in their own happiness and had seen little in western culture that made them trust that we had the recipe for success.
I personally never wanted the responsibility of an arranged marriage, although I don’t find it shocking or dismaying as a cultural practice for others. But my point is- it’s clearly not simply ‘courtship’ or parental involvement that causes whatever it is you find unpleasant. You could hardly have more parental involvement than an arranged marriage, and this is not the only Indian couple I know of who had an arranged marriage and want the same for their children.
I do find it ironic that your final sentence could easily have been spoken by the majority of those I know who are interested in courtship- for most parents who choose courtship, it is because dating “was unpleasant enough that they’d rather not risk putting their children through it.” They use the exact same reasoning and standards you just stated – personal experience- and yet, reached the completely opposite conclusion. Although perhaps really it’s the same conclusion- we will do things totally differently. Which is, after all, a script of its own. A formula- reaction, instead of action.
The HG is out of town for two weeks, at a cabin with limited to no internet access, but when she gets back, maybe she and her sister can take the time to put together a post of their own from their point of view.
I’m sorry if I seemed to lump you into a group of hostile “courtship advocates,” because I certainly did not mean to (and I said “perhaps” because of course I can’t know what someone else would say). I’m just trying to convey what it can look like coming up in it rather than choosing it. Everybody said that there wasn’t a script, everybody said that every story was different . . . until it turned out things were *too* different. Most of the courtships I know that worked (and the people still seem happy with the *courtship*, not just the marriage) were ones where the girl was still quite young and living at home, the young man was geographically close or already known to the parents, and everybody had fairly similar expectations *and* none of the parents were control freaks.
I know arranged marriages can work well, but I also notice that the stories of them working come from eastern cultures, which have a very different ethos and tradition across the board (especially when it comes to family/community) than western cultures. There isn’t really a western tradition of arranged marriages (community involvement and parental supervision, yes, arranged, no) except for the rich and powerful and even there it’s been a few centuries. I doubt it would work if imported into western culture. Even our fairy tales are wrong–they’re all about striking out on your own.
I do see the irony in the fact that my reason for *not* wanting courtship is the same as other people’s for *not* wanting dating. (And I DO want to take as much good from courtship as I can–I want to teach my kids to wait until they are marriage material and until they’ve found someone who is marriage material, and I want them to pursue it with seriousness and respect.) But I also see irony in the fact that the parents who are choosing courtship (along with many other lifestyle choices that often accompany it) are doing so, not as part of a larger, deeper culture but because they are striking out on their own, forging their own path, rethinking everything. I don’t think they should be too surprised when at some point their children look around and say–hey, we should have the chance to strike out on our own, too.
I agree that arranged marriage wouldn’t work in western culture. I don’t want to import them. My point is not that we should, but that obviously, it’s not just that strong parental involvement is the problem- or elae that strong parental involvement would not have been the norm for all of human history until about 90 years ago.
I’m wondering- was your family into ATIA, Bill Gothard’s thing?
And I agree that our kids, raised outside the mainstream culture, are probably going to want to do their own thing in many areas- and for them, *their* mainstream culture *is* outside the mainstream, so for them, striking out ‘on their own’ will involve a lot of returning to what actually is mainstream. Children are born persons, after all, and we have to respect their personhood. I believe, and know from personal experience, that this is quite compatible with a courtship model, because we did it and we know others who did.
Here is an article I found by one of those young people I have watched grown up:
http://comefillyourcup.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/goin%E2%80%99-courtin%E2%80%99/
this one is by her sister-in-law, who saw no problem with dating but had to court because that’s what her future husband wanted:
http://comefillyourcup.com/2012/05/14/a-convert-to-courtship/
Charlotte Church- you might find this one interesting- I have met her, too, and I don’t know her as well, but I’ve heard good things about her and her kids (which includes older boys) from somebody who does:
http://comefillyourcup.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/purity-training-and-courtship-books/
Both of you might enjoy this one on Christian dating, by a mother of older young men:
http://comefillyourcup.com/2012/05/22/in-defense-of-dating/
Queen of Carrots, The Equuschick just finished reading the thread between you and the DHM and is very intrigued.
When she gets a chance she will hopefully write a post of her own on this subject, per the DHM’s request and now also because you have interested her. The EC suspects she does totally get where you’re coming from- Not because The EC’s parents were at all like you describe, but because The EC grew up in your generation and though she doesn’t know from first-hand experience what can go wrong with courtship, she does know of what you speak because she saw the same things you describe going on in the lives of her friends as well.
(For instance, she knows of one particular couple who in their mid-twenties, in the midst of their engagement, still had very strict parental time limits on their phone conversations. Pretty sure these were cell phones we’re talking about, with the engaged couple paying the bill.)
What you’re talking about, QoC, the phenomenon of parents who say “there is no script” but then very clearly intervene when things differ from what was their script after all, is one The Equuschick saw in rampant numbers among her internet friends growing up.
But the question is, was the problem caused by courtship, or was the problem the attitude of the parents themselves?
As parents yourselves now, you absolutely have the right to start from scratch and make different decisions yourselves ,and you may decide to avoid the courtship route altogether and that would be a valid choice too. But that, and doing it the way your parents and the parents of our friends did it, aren’t the only options available to our generation now. You can also choose to go with a roughly courtshipish route, and just make the conscious decision not to carry the same attitudes with you. You, as the parent, can make the decision to say “there is no script”, and mean it in a way that perhaps most of the parents of our own generation never did.
Please understand The Equuschick is *not* saying you have to make this choice, there are other valid choices. But it might be a mistake to say that because we’ve seen parents doing the whole courtship thing in a very unhelpful way, we should dismiss that option out of hand.
I appreciate your response. You point out the possibility that the problem is not with courtship, per se, but with the parents abusing it. I for a very long time believed the same to be true of ATI/Gothard (which yes, both my husband and I were raised in)–the teachings were fine, it was just some parents who misused it. Now I’ve come to see that the teachings were horribly skewed and our family was just incredibly strong and well-balanced to survive it as gracefully as we did. And that the teachings were set up to appeal to exactly the sort of people in whose hands they would be the most dangerous.
I don’t think courtship (which is, after all, a vague concept with many possible meanings and many different advocates, not a monolithic organization trying to tell you how to live your whole life) is on the same level, at all, at all. But when parents are talking about it *for their children* it still boils down to that one thing that sticks in my craw: parents exerting control over adult children. I don’t think I, as a parent, have that right. I don’t think I, personally, as a parent, can be trusted with that kind of power.
No matter how gentle and genial my approach to courtship, if I felt I had any overarching duty to guard my daughter’s heart or guide her relationships, and I found out she had her heart set on some fellow whom neither she nor I had ever met, I would probably react . . . exactly as my parents did. (And if she were 15, I would have every right and duty to do so. At 23, not so much.)
When they are young teens, I will set what boundaries seem necessary to keep them from doing something too stupid while their brains finish maturing. While they are young I will do everything I can to share my values and point out pitfalls I see. If my children WANT to engage in courtship, I’ll be happy to help. If they just want to talk about things, I’ll listen and sympathize. If they need some space to figure out things on their own, I’ll give it to them. If they think when they are younger that courtship sounds good but find it doesn’t make sense later on, I don’t want them to feel they have disappointed me or are settling for second best.
I’m not going to say, “this is what our family believes in,” or “this is what we want to practice.” When it comes to courtship and marriage, it’s about them, as adults, starting a new family. And I want them to know those decisions are firmly in their hands, and that I trust them to make them wisely.
Ah- as you continued to comment, I became ever more sure that I was seeing the effects of ATIA. I am so sorry. ATIA is toxic, and does cause long term harm. Yes, your family must have been amazing to get through it without shattering.
We were never in ATIA. People often thought we should be because we looked similar from the outside- mainly because of our whole grain dining habits, cooking from scratch, the skirts on the girls and the lack of television in our home. This was a very superficial judgment, as these were things we did without reference to any third parties (and the whole grains were something we did long before we were even homeschoolers) but pigeon-holing people this way always is superficial, and it seems to go with Gothardite territory.
Out of curiosity we sent for an application once, many years ago when we just had two or three kids and they were quite young- it must have been around 21 years ago now. We took one look at the application and were horrified. That’s not hyperbole- I can still feel the visceral reaction in my gut as I read what looked to me like an application to be approved to join a cult. We couldn’t believe anybody *ever* signed off on it and it rattled us to think of the people we knew who did. Even things we already did and thought were good ideas (no T.V. for instance) we saw no reason to sign any sort of a ‘covenant’ agreeing to keep them and bind ourselves to the authority of a total stranger who wasn’t even married. Ugh.
We saw through ATIA at the application point and stayed away. We never attended a conference. The only ATIA books we have are the Character Sketches (a gift from Gothardites for house=sitting) and some stuff I picked up at a thrift shop a couple years back out of morbid curiosity. We told people we thought it was more like a cult than a homeschooling approach. It doesn’t matter to those who were actually in it- there is, in my experience, no way in the world to convince ATIA survivors that we aren’t doing the obnoxious things they presume we are doing just because we use some of the same words that Bill Gothard used, but that is one of the many sorts of fall-out we have seen in those who escape from ATIA bondage.
ATIA survivors are unable, in my experience, to separate ATIA from anything that reminds them of ATIA. ATIA survivors also often take the critical spirit and judgmental attitudes they learned in ATIA with them when they leave- they just now direct those attitudes at anything that reminds them of their ATIA experience.
In fact, in a few cases with mothers who did join ATIA the fact that we didn’t because we saw through it actually makes them angry with us. The ATIA fall out is just huge and long lasting. So, again, I am sorry.
Well, if it’s impossible for me to regard objectively anything associated with ATI, it may not be helpful to continue this conversation. (And it’s probably already gone on to the point of tediousness).
However, give me a chance. I’m trying not to rush to extremes. I don’t think your family’s approach to courtship has harmed it–I certainly wouldn’t have enough information to make that judgment even if I did think so. And like I said, I have seen cases where courtship seems to work just fine.
But . . . if it IS different, HOW is it different? I’m not talking about just the word “courtship” here. I’m talking about the exact same resources and speakers. I’m talking about Jonathan Lindvall (who was the one Gothard imported courtship from wholesale, before Lindvall went all the way to betrothal), and his testimony of not pursuing the girls he wanted in favor of the one his parents thought was God’s will. I’m talking about S.M. Davis’s innumerable sermons and Doug Wilson’s books. Not to mention Vision Forum (at least ATI let girls do interesting things as long as they weren’t married). (Here I’m referencing some of the resources on the link in your above comment).
All of these still subscribe to some common assumptions: that emotional attachment outside of a parent-approved, committed relationship is bad. That young people, girls especially, are not qualified to know whether they have found a suitable partner. That parents need to direct and guide, period.
So, where’s the difference? I admit if I hadn’t grown up with the ATI teachings of “God is waiting to rain brimstone upon all who step out from under their parent’s umbrellas” and “Wonderful shiny things beyond imagining await those who submit,” I might have had the guts to tell them to mind their own business and I would be happy to introduce them in the due course of time. But I don’t see how their response would have been any different, assuming they believed in courtship at all.
What would you do if your grown daughter who had always behaved with utmost circumspection around males told you she was in a lengthy, daily correspondence with a guy she had never met, and it was obvious that she considered him the only possibility in the world? Would you think you needed to do something to protect her heart? Maybe contact the fellow and find out his intentions? Would you want to check out the guy thoroughly before you gave your blessing to the relationship? That’s all they did. And I didn’t fight them on it or question it. There weren’t any threats or danger of bridges burned. Just a deep, deep sense of despair and helplessness and self-doubt.
Thank you for this. I know I’ve been guilty of the “if I parent this way, I will get this kind of child” philosophy, and after seeing some from a generation ahead of me find out that’s not the way it works I have realized how much I believed in that too.
I never dated before my husband, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try throwing my heart at some yahoos in my life. That doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything sinful or humiliating or stupid. But even though at the time the unrequited love was really hard on my heart because I thought it meant something was wrong with me, I am SO grateful things turned out the way they did, because they could have gone south very easily and really hope my children are kept from making the mistakes their dad and I made, respectively, when we were in that stage of life.
“I never dated before my husband, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try throwing my heart at some yahoos in my life. That doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything sinful or humiliating or stupid. But even though at the time the unrequited love was really hard on my heart because I thought it meant something was wrong with me, I am SO grateful things turned out the way they did, because they could have gone south very easily and really hope my children are kept from making the mistakes…..”
AMEN! I, too, have only ever dated my husband, actually he’s the only person I’ve ever even kissed, but only through the grace of God. Some of the things I did back when I was single, throwing my heart here and there, make me shudder!
One thing that I found to help with romantic relationships was to see them well-modeled in real life and in fiction. As you said, classics or movies of classics will often have ideal courtships, but equally important is the problematic relationships, because I can tell you that a strong sense of “I don’t want to go there,” can be a major driver. I’d also suggest that any way of teaching that shows how to recognize a manipulator (all the way up to abusive) is good, especially if the child in question has a tendency to rebel. One of the first things that abusers like to do is cut their potential victim off from support groups, so telling someone slightly rebellious that their guy is abusive is likely to meet with a reaction along the lines of “You just don’t like him, but he loves me.” But if the child knows the signals, she will be better protected.
You’re so right- that is very, very important, and is a great place to use fiction. Dickens, Oliver Twist in particular. I still remember reading this with a ten year old who gradually had it dawn on her that Fagan and the Artful Dodger did not have Oliver’s best interests in mind. Likewise, Sense and Sensibility, the character of Lucy was so useful in warning the girls about certain sorts of friends, and Wilberforce was even more useful in warning them about bad boys who seem so personable and wonderful.
Bit of a rabbit-trail here, but a couple of days ago my 19yod showed me this short film illustrating codependency.
I’m reading Bleak House and after watching that video I got to the part about Skimpole, who’s perpetually in debt and needing his friends to bail him out, and came to this passage where Skimpole, having been threatened with arrest for his debts, introduces two young people he’s only just met that day, to the debt collector in full confidence that they’ll fix things:
Definitely better for our kids to meet those people in fiction so they will quickly recognize them when they meet them in real life.
(BTW, I think you meant Willoughby, not Wilberforce, unless you’re talking about another movie.)
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Testing to see if embedding works in the comments here — apologies in advance if it makes an ugly comment instead!
Wow, can I hear myself in this! My hubby and I were serial daters too…and I ended up pregnant with our first son shortly after we got engaged (which moved up the wedding). His parents and my parents had the same sort of problem. I don’t want that for my boys. Not that I’ll love them any less for it, but it’s SO MUCH harder when you go into a marriage this way. Especially since we were still teenagers (I turned 20 a month after Manling #1 was born).
Now my Eldest is almost 18, #2 is 16, and the younger two are 12 and 10. The Eldest has “liked” a couple of girls from afar (he’s not really the outgoing one), but #2 is a “chick magnet” as he likes to joke. He is tall, thin, has the Sicilian Italian dark skin of his father’s side of the family, and beautiful big brown eyes. When he hit 15 last year, the girls SWARMED. It was incredibly funny for a bit, until one of those girls happened to be a good friend from church. She is 13, and as someone else mentioned, girls are much more forward at this stage than boys are! Thank goodness a couple of us moms were standing around talking after church one Sunday (talking about the kids actually), and I made the comment to her mom that Brendan is not allowed to date–trying to subtly let her know that MY son would not be knocking on her daughter’s door. She said, oh don’t worry–I didn’t expect you to let that happen! She assured me that all “hanging out” would be done properly supervised and as much family involved as possible. So far there’s been no hitch.
I WAS very worried about what their dad’s reaction would be when I broached the topic with him…but he was all for leading them towards courtships. I don’t know how much stems from a Biblical POV, but even a conscientious father can see what casual dating can get you these days. Out of wedlock pregnancies are almost the least of all problems. While I wholeheartedly pray for abstinence in my sons’ relationships, I am not going to leave them uneducated and unprotected. To that end we make sure we keep the lines of communication Wide Open. And I pray. A lot!
My sister=in-law is from Wilton-a small town close to Yuma
My parents didn’t exactly follow the courtship model, but it was close to it. I started “dating” ( I wasn’t allowed to date and we never went anywhere alone, but I don’t know what else to call it) when I was 14 and he was almost 16. He started working at 16 and bought a house for us a year before we were married. We got married 3 weeks after I turned 18. People can’t believe it when they find out he is the only guy I ever even liked.
My siblings followed more of a dating model, not always with desirable results. Thanks for the post. My oldest is 12, going on 13 and I realized my husband and haven’t really talked about this yet. You have given me a lot to think about.
wonderful post as always, i would have loved to hear it from the girls’ point of view as well….all 3 of them. and hey maybe even their hubbies…
as for your boy, i was one of THOSE girls..the serial flirter…anything to get my HANDS on them, any physical contact..knees..etc…i knew that if i could touch skin to skin, in an INNOCENT matter…i’d illicit a physical reaction from them most of the time..even just a small gasp or a glint in their eyes…blushing. I revelled in the power….and only by God’s grace that he saved me for my hubby, which i snatched just in the manner i described above. God luckily had chosen each other for each other…and we were only for each other. (is that clear or confusing..lol) but yeah..teach that boy to save some heartaches and embarrasing moments, arms crossed and aloof is best…(although that will make the pursuers even more determined….) They’ll just have to wait!!!!!
I admire how you guys have done it..because it worked for you guys..your girls seem happy and what more can one strive for right?? My 11 yr old dd says she’s never dating till she’s like old , like 25..and will move into the house next door…always hoping right??
We do talk often about the type of spouse one should look for….men like daddy, who are kind, compasionate, hard working honest…etc…..and work from there….
off to read the others
So far only Kim, at Life in a Shoe, has weighed in. I would love it if the girls would write about it, too! Maybe later…
“We don’t really believe that there is only one person in the whole world that is the right person for you. We believe that two Christians of strong faith and commitment really can make almost any relationship work, given some basic compatibility issues. We did encourage lots of opportunities to just get to know a wide range of friends, and talked about what sorts of traits and ideas are most important.”
^This. Thank you.
To me, courtship for girls seems very logical – remain under their parent’s provision and protection and seek wisdom and guidance from them as they make the transition from submitting to their father to submitting to a husband. Daughters need to prepare to be homemakers, wives, and mothers, and I don’t want to oversimplify things, but it doesn’t seem quite as complicated to me as it is for sons.
Boys, as I understand it, they need to be able to financially support a family before they consider marriage. They also need to be prepared to take on the role as the leader of their family. I would say in the vast majority of cases, girls will be ready to enter into courtship before boys both because of maturity issues and because of the heavy burden they need to be ready to carry before they marry.
So boys entering into courtship later… in most cases out of the teen years… It seems to me it would be good for boys to spend some time “making their way in the world” taking on responsibility for themselves before they take on responsibility for themselves + wife and children. I’m all for apprenticing and working during the teen years, but at least to me, a young man who is still home having his mama take care of him, living in submission to his parents is really not a man.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: So what about late teen/early 20′s sons? As hard as it will be, I think it would be best for me to “cut the apron strings” by that point – definitely staying close in our relationship and being there to offer wisdom when needed, but letting him take that next step in preparing for marriage and becoming a man. I would be honored and thrilled if he would involve us in the courtship process, but that may or may not be possible, so more of the “supervisory role” seems to fall upon the family of the young lady. Am I seeing that accurately?
One concern that Preacher Man has had about this is that we may not be able to offer the kind of guidance we would like to be able to offer if our son is out of our house when he first begins courting. So I feel like it’s a situation between a rock and a hard place. Rock being, he needs to become a real man before he’s ready to find a wife. Hard place being, that means he may no longer be in our home, so our ability to have input may be restricted. Hmmmm…
Maybe I need to just go back to worrying about potty training.
As I wrote earlier, our son got married at 18.5. He was financially able to provide. The relationship would not have proceeded as fast as it did if hasn’t been able to. I’m not so sure about young men living on their own. I guess it all depends on their age. 30 and still at home would make me question why. Our son stayed home until 3 days before the wedding. It was a natural transition for him going from our home to having his wife as his help meet.
Throughout his upper teenage years we gave him more and more freedom in decision making and had more discussions than just submission. We gave him opportunities to lead our family under the guidance of my husband. He also took care of things around the house as if it were his own. Again under the watchful eye of my husband. When they were courting, he and his wife studied scripture together and he also worked alongside his father-in-law. So there were many opportunities for him to prove himself to everyone involved.
Not many men can do all this by 18. However, my son has wanted nothing for the last few years, but to work hard, find a young lady to marry, and start a family. He prayed to this end and God has blessed him.
That’s wonderful, Sheri. So how about you write a guest post about how you helped him develop in this direction?
This is gonna be disjointed.
It’s just something that has to be done on a case by case basis. There are no magic formulae, and each person is individual, and so is each combination of couples. I know of other young men who married without leaving home first, and they did fine (I may ask one of them to write a guest post, but it will be a while, they are grieving the expected loss of a nephew/cousin, born this week with too many severe issues for survival).
Strider’s parents required him to leave home- and that was really the best thing for him. But my other friend’s parents did not require their sons to leave, and they were quite able to manage the transition.
Another friend with four of five boys (no daughters, though they did have foster daughters for a while)- tells me that she thinks it’s really, really important for boys to be required to buy some of their own necessities at a much earlier age than girls. So they are all still minors, but she’s been requiring they pay for their own socks, underwear, and a couple other things for a long time.
you are right that the supervisory role largely falls on the part of the girl’s parents, and the girl’s parents in the end make the rules- although my friends with boys did make suggestions about what they thought was wise or unwise (their son courted a girl who didn’t really get courtship and whose parents didn’t care if they dated or not).
Our experience:
1. Shasta was out on his own and had been a long time. His dad is not a Christian and his advice was of this type: “Is she pregnant? Why else would you get married?” his father had almost no influence on his son, for understandable reasons. It was also mostly a long distance courtship since he lived so far away from us.
2. Strider has a fantastic relationship with his parents, and very much took their advice, asked for it, welcomed it, etc, even though he did not live at home and hadn’t for four or five years. His whole family got involved – in fact, it was his uncle who brought up the picture of our daughter in the church directory and said, “Don’t let this one get away. Idiot.” Or something like that.=)
3. That same uncle is the father of our former ‘swain.’ The ex-swain lived on his own, too- and I think needed to. he is also very close to his parents, talked to them every day (worked with his dad at UPS), and they did offer some guidance and support.
I know that none of the other parents saw courtship quite the same way we did, but we all do love and respect each other (well, I have trouble with Shasta’s dad, but I love and respect his mom.=D)
Basically, I think that indicates you can still be involved even your kids are grown and on their own if you have built up that kind of relationship- not controlling, but mutually respectful and warm. but I also think you are most likely to have that kind of relationship if you are honestly able to be okay with it if you adult children do NOT ask advice on every detail and decide to take a different path than you suggest.And you know, some things to come are going to be much harder than you realize now, but they are the things you haven’t thought about.=) All these things you are worried about? Very, very many of them are going to be much, much easier when the actual time comes.
As a mom of 5 sons, I’ve thought a lot about guys and courtship. My oldest is 9, so we obviously haven’t had any of our own children get married, but we did just attend the wedding of a young man who lived with us for 1.5 years with the express purpose of finding a girl, courting her, and marrying her. He’d recently become a Christian and became convicted about courtship, homeschooling, etc., and wanted to do those things, but he didn’t know anyone who did them in real life. He’d met my husband over the Internet, and, long story short, moved in with us so that he could see how it all worked and would have the opportunity to meet courtship-minded families. He also wanted to be under the authority and mentorship of someone with similar goals since his own parents don’t have the same convictions and wanted him living on his own, since he was 22 when he moved in and had just graduated from college.
I don’t think that all guys have to live on their own to manage marriage and courtship well. The kind of headship that a husband is supposed to provide is a loving, sacrificial headship, and it’s so easy to become selfish when you live on your own. Most young men would live in apartments if they lived on their own, and there’s just so little work that they could do at home, even if they wanted to. They can’t do their own repairs, till a garden, or anything like that. What’s more, they get in the habit of never waiting for the restroom, always being able to decide what to watch on TV, and basically doing whatever they want without taking into account people around them because there are no other people around them.
Obviously, not every guy who lives alone will become self-centered and lazy, but it does happen to an alarming amount of young men. I think that men have a natural inclination to take dominion and be in authority, so many of them probably need more practice with sacrificing than with being the boss.
Part of our plan, which I’m sure will change in some ways as our children age and will play out differently for each child, is to encourage them to create their own businesses in their mid-teen years. Running a business is a good way to practice being the head of something, so if they are still having me cook their dinner, I think it will all even out in the end.
Our sons courtship/engagement/wedding was perfect (sometimes it felt almost too perfect). We knew the family well, they were very good friends, everything we wanted as 4 parents lined up, no big issues came up, etc. In 5 months we went from the beginning of courtship to wedding. As we were going through the whole process, we told our 15 and 17 yo daughters, that this is typically NOT how things go. Issues come up and you may be good friends, but feel that this isn’t the person God has planned for you to marry. A couple of their friends were in courtship that eventually ended, so they saw the struggles there also.
After our son was married, we all went through a grieving process. We missed having him home and part of our every day life. We also noticed that he distanced himself from us and felt uncomfortable in our home. This really saddened me, but looking back, he just didn’t know where to fit. He loved us, but wanted to learn how to be a husband. Being here he would fall back into being our unmarried son. & months later we now all know what our roles are and feel comfortable.
I know that I make this all sound so happy, but there were struggles and tears, on all sides. It’s hard letting our children grow up and be on their own (especially when your body is raging with pregnancy hormones!)
Great post! We have a lot in common–esp. the antics of our youth! :/
My dh and I now have young adult “children” and have been presenting them with a courtship idea for several years. One resource which will give you some great ideas (although it is out of print I think…It is available at amazon) is “Best Friends for Life: An Extraordinary New Approach to Dating, Courtship and Marriage–for Parents and their Teens by Michael Phillips and Judy Phillips”
We read this aloud as a family and we all loved it. (It also gives real life examples).
I think the hardest part of this for us is finding “eliblible, like-minded” young adults. Our church is very small and has a lot of young kids. Thus, we are relying heavily on the Lord for the future!
Thanks for the thought provoking post!
Blessings!
I couldn’t figure out where this reply ought to go without disrupting Sheri (and I am grateful for your input too, Sheri!) – but I just wanted to come back and say that what I am getting from all of this in regards to sons is that many things will fall into their natural course if we have a solid foundation of good communication with our sons and they value Godly principles and wisdom. And those things would go for daughters too. So without getting to caught up in terms and logistics, I would do well to focus on those things. This will go a long way in making the whole “acquisition of a spouse” thing so very different than what my husband and I experienced.
Yes, Church Mouse. Do read the links I posted- especially the two from the mothers of sons. I think you will find them encouraging. One of them is by somebody who practices ‘dating,’ but what she describes is closer to courtship, IMO- terms can be quite the hang-up.
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