The Death of Courtship

I came across an article today about “courting.” The main focus of the article was the evolution if you will, of this complicated phenomenon. As with most things with a long history, there has been a lot of change to courting over the years- especially recently. In fact, when looking at the changes, the article eludes to, and I believe that we have all but lost the art of and even desire to court someone.

Even under the best circumstances, we live in a culture where you go on a couple “dates” and from that either end up with nothing, or a relationship. If the timing isn’t right, or something goes wrong and the relationship falters, the only way you really have to pick it back up again is to simply jump into the relationship again.

What exactly happened to make this change? Why is it that I am so surprised when someone actually asks someone out on a real date? How did this become such an exception to the way we live? While in most ways, the women’s movement and the sexual revolution have done great things for our society, it may be that in other aspects, we have lost some valuable things.

Though I myself have certainly followed this, it does seem incredibly limiting. I can’t think of a person I wasn’t dating that it felt ok to get romantic style gifts for. You don’t get flowers for someone your interested in, you get them for someone your with. This leaves you with little more than a first impression with which to actually begin dating, and doesn’t actually show whether or not you are actually looking to put effort towards that or not.

If you were to meet someone, and instead of immediately asking you out, they pulled the old fashioned card and tried to woo you, you are if nothing else guaranteed that you are someone they consider worth working for. That is a huge thing that we so often lack.

Throwing in the fact that so many dates are merely preludes to get sex from someone, the lines become even more blurred. Does interest lie only physically, or in actual courting, which was of course designed as a step towards a lasting relationship? Mix this with our societal ineptitude at communicating with one another, and you end up with a lot of failed relationships, or potential relationships that this never get off the ground.

With struggling relationships, the lack of courting can also be a hindrance. Especially in the global community that we live in, where people can move across the country or the globe with very little effort, relationships can become strained by time, distance, or circumstance. People being at different phases of their life face the same problems. Were a person willing to try and move towards a possible future, without tying up their present, there are very few options in these circumstances.

Imagine for a second that someone you are really interested in moves away. You want to see where this can go, but dating is really out, and the distance may be too much for a relationship. You really only have the options of being friends. In our society, there isn’t much in the way of a middle ground. If we were still in the mindset of courting someone, you could totally feel ok to send them gifts, letters, etc. that express your interest without negative repercussions. The way we currently view things, you really only do this with someone you are with. The person on the receiving end would find it near impossible to view these tokens as flattering, but non-binding. Our society has come to the point where we can have sex without commitment, but the idea that you can express real interest in someone comes only with the pressure of being together.

As mentioned, struggling relationships could benefit from the same thing if there was say, two people with similar ultimate desires, but dissimilar needs at the moment. The one with willingness and desire to commit, could continue to woo the other person as they moved through their life. Showing their interest, and keeping their “hand in the game” while still allowing the other person to live their life unencumbered. You can’t do this while being “just friends” because you lose all the romanticism, and you can’t do this while trying to date, because the one who isn’t ready isn’t given the space they need to grow.

In some ways we seem to have so much relationship freedom, but in that we seem to have created rigid guidelines for ourselves and the way we react to one another that though unspoken, may be even more binding in some ways than the understood traditions of old.