(a) Courtship requires that the couple never be alone together -- this is defined as a "date" and is forbidden. However, this requirement for 100% supervision is nearly impossible to arrange, especially for adults with fulltime jobs, long commutes, etc. It's even harder if their families are non-Christian, broken, far away, or not willing to be involved. Friends and so-called "accountability couples" have busy lives of their own, and can usually chaperone only rarely.
So as a practical matter, it's nearly impossible to build a relationship in the modern world unless a couple is willing to "bend the rules" and do some one-on-one dating. To their credit, most courtship types will acknowledge this when pressed to the wall (or, when they get into a relationship themselves and discover it the hard way.)
(b) Courtship has absolutely no mechanism for finding someone to court. Indeed, courtship isn't even supposed to begin until a man has already found a suitable woman, and is pretty darn near sure that he'll marry her if he wins her over -- only then is he permitted to approach the woman's father or guardian.
But, without how is a man ever supposed to find a woman? Only rarely does this happen through natural social circles (work, church, school, etc.) Courtship advocates actively discourage internet matchmaking, visiting other churches just to meet women, having friends set up blind dates, etc. Worse, they tell young folks, no romance till they're out of school - ignoring the fact that highschool and college are by far the best opportunities to meet someone.
With stances like that, how courters expect anyone to find mates is anybody's guess. All experience hath shewn, that for most people, if they don't get out and do some casual (but chaste) "shopping around"-type dating, marriage will never happen for them.
But courtship advocates, in my experience, are in total denial about this issue. Over and over, I challenged them, "How do I FIND someone to court?" They never had an answer for me, and the more I pressed the issue, the madder they got (a sure sign that people know, deep down, that they are wrong.)
So I stuck with dating, and I finally found someone.
"We avoided the purposelessness of dating by setting boundaries on our time together and made it known that marriage was the overall goal, whether it would be to each other or someone else."
By that definition, I've never been on a date in my life. For me, from age 14, dating was ALWAYS about finding a marriage partner. I NEVER dated for "sport" -- with sex excluded from the dating equation, there's not much sport in it!
Still... the courtship rules now being created or resurrected, are too restrictive, and will prevent many people from finding mates. Some middle ground MUST be found to allow clean, chaste dating (ie pre-60's style), because until the whole culture is reformed, people who just "quit dating" may often be left in a lurch with no alternative, stuck in singleness for life. As the author herself admits
"If I have made any kind of case against our current dating practices, I know that was the easy part. The solution is not necessarily obvious, and our current cultural atmosphere simply does not provide any support for a return to old courtship practices.
This was also worth repeating:
If a teenage boy shows interest in treating girls properly, with respect and gentility he is made fun of mercilessly.
If a 37 year old virgin man shows interest in treating Christian women properly.... same result, all too often. The chivalry my parents taught me, as often made me a chump, as a hero. (But, my wife loves it!)