Posted on 07/31/2005 3:19:52 PM PDT by mlmr
So I have been trying to rent an apartment in my home...and all I have answering the ads are boyfriends and girlfriends. No matter what social status, no matter what income level, I am seeing unmarried twenty, thirty and forty year old couples who want to live together. If I question them, they don't even understand why I am asking.
These are Christians and Jews. I was so surprised to find that it would be so difficult to find a young married couple.
Tell me Dear Freeper...am I totally out of the ballgame to expect to find a young married couple? Am I expecting something that just isn't in our culture anymore?
My definition of courtship is getting a parents' blessing to pursue the relationship. Not that it's mandatory but it's nice to have parents like who you go out with. Also, get both families involved in building the relationship. This will sound sexist but girls have a shelf life and should not go out with a man if she can't picture herself marrying him and having his children. That's my personal opinion. I do know other people who have this draconian opinion about courtship but I think mine is pretty relaxed. I've been in some courtship forums where I just shook my head and left.
Okay, my personal society.
I love this idea, that history goes a certain way, so I have to follow. Sorry, but I was born to make my own choices, not follow a blind pattern of comformity set by what OTHER people think is right. My path to marriage with my wife doesn't interfere with your life a damn, nor does anyone else's. Stop trying to force your beliefs on everyone else. Some people don't want to be clones.
My brother-in-law is a Lutheran Pastor. His daughter, a teacher at a Lutheran school, lived with fiance for many months before they were married.
Such moral convictions cannot be forced...they must be freely adopted and accepted. That does not spare a society from the negative consequences of deparintg from such values. The founders of this nation, IMHO, with whatever other short comings, understood it and tried to articulate it.
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798
Fine. Have a great life. Screw the rest of the country.
Bu-bye.
Courtship is a method of finding and choosing your forever life-mate. It helps teens and adults find they need a better way to develop and evaluate relationships.
Courtship requires people to get to know each other as friends within each other’s family and friend settings. Courtship requires both participants to rely on and work with other trusted adults, family and friends to help discern whether this particular person would be the best person for a future marriage and family. Courtship helps people plan their futures together.
I like courtship because it takes the sexual pressure off people. It asks you to bring potential life-mate into your home and into your life so you can assess them in the everyday, not on dates. It asks you to spend time with the person in only group settings thus keeping the sexual pressure to a minimum. People who are in sexual reltionships do not assess the relationship with any clarity. I think my husband called it "thinking with your ****". Additionally, it has you talking directly to another adult or group of adults you respect and who care about you about the relationship. So, lifetime decisions are not made in a alone and in a romantic thrall.
Courtship is becoming popular and I expect it will make a bigger impact in the coming years. I think people are tired of bouncing from relationship to relationship and marriage to marriage. People are looking for ways to better ensure a lifetime commitment. We all know the old dating and serial relationship methods don't work.
You'll learn soon enough how different your relationship is now than it will be when you are married. Not better or worse, certainly, just different. Right now you only see each other on free time.... free time and vacation. People are different when they are on recreation time than they are when it's cleaning, doing chores, and getting ready for work time. You're different at home doing laundry than you are out with P, aren't you? Living together, married or not, means you're bringing someone else into real life, when you really become the full range of who you are, and you'll meet the full range of who P is... And it will be different than the best behavior of courting and play time.
What is your definition of "courtship?" If it's not dating, what is it?
I wish I had the priviledge of parents who approved of my choices in life. Mine were abusive, tried to control every aspect of my life from day 1, constantly put me down no matter what, and when I met my now-wife and started to rebuild my confidence, they saw that as I threat and tried to stop me back down by lying about her and trying to drive a wedge between us. I had enough and chose to leave my family behind and embrace the one person who was ever completely honest with me in my entire life.
The sad thing is that some people on this site, and even in this topic, would comdemn ME for it.
His daughter should have cracked open a Bible and read it, huh?
There's a really good book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It's the most even toned book about this issue I can think of.
Right, so basically relying on others' opinions to make your relationship decisions for you.
Sorry, I make my own choices.
I'm trying to respect your beliefs anyway, but the fact that you hammer on everyone else's makes it difficult to not want to return the favor.
I think people who have trouble dating find this an easier, softer way. Sorry.
I live together with my girlfriend. My parents did the same.
Place: Pasadena Calif
Time: June, 1967
Mission: find a furnished apartment
The granny cottage (Rose Bowl area) was quite attractive & things were going well...until the landlord asked "gotta girlfriend ?"
"Yes"
"She ever spend the night? cuz we don't allow that"
The same sort of incompatabilities that break up marriage. In courtship you usually see each other on their best behavior. People make an effort to put on their best face. People are going to let go a little, however, if you're living together 24/7, you won't be constantly attentive to each other when you're together all the time (it's usually not that way when on a date), and the differences you each have will be more in your face. Basically, your negative qualities (in terms of personality, lifestyle, and attitudes) are much more likely to show themselves.
That's why it's not perfect (when abusive or generally crazy parents are involved). In that case, a really good best friend can help or some other inner circle of friends you have. After my disaster of a 'relationship' I made sure my man met my
Well, that's different. So you asked this question here on this board as a rhetorical question, right?
No because the conversation here is giving me the information I asked. If people just lined up and said "Yes" "No....I would have gotten one sort of information but Freepers are wordy and opinionated people and the folks who have given their two cents give me a sense of how different things are out there.
The happy couple met at their Church's Bible study group. :-)
I can say from personal experience that living together before marriage prepares you for precisely NOTHING. We knew we were going to get married, and we had already made the emotional commitment...to a limited degree, as it turned out, but we didn't know it at the time. A legal and religiously valid marriage changes the relationship, I don't care how long you live together (or how long the "experiment" lasts), it's not the same. I can't explain it, but it's not the same.
I'm not here to bash anybody. I just happen to disagree with the premise that living together prepares couples for real marriage. You can learn to "live with" somebody by having a college roommate. Marriage is a whole 'nother level.
So, I don't recommend living together before marriage; yes, for religious reasons, but not the kind most people think of. Christian teachings have a practical side to them, you know. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and that's the reason He wants us to do some things and not to do others. It's just not practical. And don't think I'm bitter about it or anything. This year will see our 12th wedding anniversary, and we're still going strong. I just think living together beforehand didn't prove anything, and could have (and should have) been entirely dispensed with.
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