How can you know what you are looking for in a future spouse if you do not regularly interact with members of the opposite sex?

In arranged marriage communities there is little to no interaction. The young people take advantage of their “season of singleness” and wait on their parents to make the match for them. The parents do the work of investigation and romance happens after the wedding.

But

We live in America and we choose our spouses here. For better or for worse, arranged marriage is anathema to our way of life. If a man wants to get married he needs to find a wife. So how does he do that? If he wanted to marry a godly home schooled girl how would he find her?

Ready or Not?

Many young people don’t know if they are ready to get married. The idea of marriage intimidates young people. The Christian divorce rate scares believers who don’t want to become apart of the statistic. So the response is to push courtship off until next year… and then the year after that. Even if we feel ready to marry how do we find others who are ready as well?

My grandparents got married in their teens, My parents in their twenties and my peers in their thirties and late twenties. Right now young people are always “not quite ready to get married.” Timing is a personal and parental decision but let me say this: If we want another godly generation we need the current generation to get married in time to give birth to it.

College Interaction

In college you meet dozens of single people every week. Interaction is easy and many young people who go to college come back married. Some girls jokingly go to school for their “MRS degree.” Lots of causal interaction allows college students to interact and learn without getting involved emotionally or physically.

But going to college is scary and expensive. Particularly for large homeschool families. The culture in most colleges does not value purity which also poses a challenge. What do you do for those who are unable or unwilling to go to college?

Homeschool Interaction

Homeschool students have many social events in high school but romance is generally discouraged at these events. Often it is forbidden in highschool altogether.  Once homeschool graduates get social permission to interact they loose their primary channels for interaction. This challenge is amplified for those who attend small churches.

The lack of interaction has caused many home school guys to marry public school girls they meet at college. The home school girls stay home deep into their 20s not meeting many single men. They wonder where all the godly men are.

One mom wrote a list of all the single home schooled girls in their community between the ages of 21 and 30. “The results were depressing” she admitted “We couldn’t get ourselves to make the list go down to [age] 18.”

Casual Interaction in Courtship

With the distance between so many home schoolers, interacting in a casual manner is difficult. It is hard to drive an hour for a “casual” meeting with a group of home schooled singles. Even harder for a “casual” cup of coffee. The result is:

• Interactions become more intentional (formal dinners, blind dates)
• and thereby more intimidating.
• The more intimidating they get they more they are postponed and avoided.

Less Interaction = Fewer & Later Marriages.

What do you think?

• Do you agree?
• Is there a barrier to interaction in courtship?
• What has caused it?
• How can we help conservative singles interact casually?
• How does your community handle this challenge.

Related Posts:

• Courtship Challenge #1: Identification (19)
• Courtship & Predestination (36)
• How to Be a Godly Wingman (14)
• Courtship Definitions (9)
• 7 Reasons Men Wait to Get Married (10)

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One key to any successful marital system is the ability to identify a possible mate. For cultures some this means using professional match makers to facilitate the identification. Fiddler on the Roof anyone? Other cultures created opportunities for young people to meet each other and do their own identification.

The village dance is gone.

In America the idea of an arranged marriage goes against our core as a people. We tend to value liberty and happiness over safety and predictability. The traditional American mechanism has been the community dance.

In these dances the man must give his full attention to a single woman for a single song. This pulled the guys away from the huddle of other guys who talked about guy topics. It forced them converse with the gentler gender. It also caused some of them to notice a sparkle in the young lady they had not noticed before. Sally is not the same girl at age 19 as she was when she was 14.

These traditional dances sometimes used dance cards that helped girls who tended to blend into the crowd. You didn’t need to be dazzling to get noticed. You only needed to show up.

Modern dances don’t work.

Dancing doesn’t work as well these days for two reasons:

Reason #1

Modern dances such as techno and hip hop are danced individually in a crowd with little individual attention. Line dances, allow for even less individual attention.

Reason #2

Most people attend dances with a date. It is hard to find a dance partner in a room full of couples. Single people often sit watching the couples dance Two Step and Swing while they sit with other singles, feeling awkward.

So, dancing is now a poor mechanism for identification. The world has abandoned it for bar room pickup lines and speed dating. The church has abandoned it for singles Bible studies and eHarmony.com.

Where are all the Godly guys?

For those who do not attend singles Bible studies or visit bars (i.e. conservative home schoolers) there are precious few culturally appropriate mechanisms for identifying a possible soul mate. Many home school girls stay at home baking bread while wondering where all the Godly guys are. They meet very few new people in a given week.

The home school guys who leave home for college or work meet lots of new people, but not stay at home girls.

Bill Gothard has attempted to address this issue by holding a once a year conference for singles but this is a band-aid and not a solution.

The village is gone too…

Not all early Americans went to the town dances. Some sects of Christianity taught that cross gender dancing should be avoided. These sects held other community functions such as picnics that would bring people from the “village” together.

The challenge now is that fundamentalist conservatives do not live in villages. They live in communities centered around ideology instead of geography. It is hard to bring the “village” together when it is spread across three counties. It’s hard to go to the church picnic when the church is an hour away.

What do you think?

• What are some good mechanisms for identification?
• How do you help Sam discover that 21 year old Sally is not the same girl she was at 16?
• Do you think match making serves (either online or in person)would help?

Caveats

Please know that I am speaking in generalities. We can learn from the exceptions but these challenges are real if not universal.

Related Posts:

• Courtship Challenge #2: Interaction (9)
• Courtship Definitions (9)
• Courtship & Predestination (36)
• Leaving is Hard to Do (5)

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Why do people cry at weddings? We don’t often cry at other life changing celebrations so what makes weddings different? Now having tried courtship, I think I know why.

Weddings signal the beginning of a new person, a new flesh, or as C.S. Lewis puts it a new entity. Two of individuals bonded together for life. But, In order to bond they must leave everyone else. Leaving is hard to do.

For example, when a man joins with his wife, his relationship with his mother changes. He no longer looks to her for the type of guidance and support he once did. There is a greater emotional distance. If the man does not sufficiently distance himself emotionally from his mother, he brings unwanted baggage and even another person into the relationship. Not a recipe for a happy marriage.

Back in the days of arranged marriages the leaving and cleaving happened almost simultaneously. Now the process of leaving starts at the beginning of the courtship. In some ways I think this is harder on families particularly close ones because the painful process of leaving is drawn out, like slowly taring away a scab.

Something Must Give

The more time John spends with Kathy the less time he have for everyone else. Also the more emotional energy/investment he gives  Kathy the less he has for everyone else. At the beginning of the relationship finding emotional time and energy was easy. He just spent less time with the girls that he knew and put that time and energy towards Kathy. Not hard.

In a courtship focusing on one girl demands not focusing on the others.

But, cutting away female relationships does not create enough time for a deepening courtship. If John wants to get to  know Kathy better he must find more time and energy. Having cut everywhere he reasonably can he has to then turn and cut time away from family. If John were a homeschooler this may be like breaking an unwritten 11th commandment. But where else will he find the time?

One thing must fade away for something new to emerge. Neo courtship demands that John and Kathy spend time with his family, her family, both families and alone.

Something has to give. Should it be friendships? Alone time? Family time?

Should leaving be gradual? We all know “that couple” that dropped all their friends as soon as they started dating. Later they find more bridges burned than they care to admit. I think leaving should be a gradual give and take process as friends and family let go emotionally.

Friends First

First comes the change in John and Kathy’s relationships with their friends, then comes a change in their relationships with our siblings. Fading friendships with siblings can be tough for homeschoolers. While John gets to spend his extra time with Kathy his brother may have no easy outlet for his extra time.

Family Second

Finally John and Kathy’s relationship with their parents must change. This can be hard if their parents are unwilling to let go. John and Kathy might have to erect boundaries with their parents.  This is does not need to be hard. Most parents are glad to see their children learn to love.

While leaving is painful, it is a happy pain.  A seed must die to its current relationship with the tree before it can become a tree of its own. I think this is why people cry at weddings.  Leaving is hard to do but it must be done.

Related Posts:

• Courtship Challenge #2: Interaction (9)
• How to Be a Godly Wingman (14)
• 5 Reasons Single Women Should Leave The Nest (36)
• The Little Things Make the Difference (9)
• Courtship Challenge #1: Identification (19)

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