Remember when young people used to date? Whatever happened to that?

A radio listener recent wrote me about an interview I did on EWTN Radio with Barbara McGuigan. I mentioned that I had been doing a teaching on dating and modesty at a Theology on Tap Session. At that session I charged the men not to leave that night until they had asked a woman out on a date.

This intrigued the listener who wanted me to expand on this just a bit and what if anything she could do to get the twenty-somes in her family (both male and female) to start dating again. Here is something of the response I penned:

Yes I suppose it was on EWTN Radio’s Open Line show on Valentine’s Day that you heard me. As for what to say, it is difficult. The culture of course is dismal today when it comes to meeting something and something we used to call “dating.”

I was telling the young people, at that theology on tap meeting that, back when I was in high school and college, we used to do something called “dating”.

This strange and currently lesser known behavior involved a young man picking up the phone, or perhaps asking a girl in person, to go I’m something known as a date. This involved an actual activity such as the two of them having dinner together, or going to a movie together, or perhaps some other function, together (as in, just the two of them).

He would ask her and she would either agree to go out with him, or not. If she did, he would actually get into his car, and go to her house, and ring the doorbell. He might even meet her parents if she still lived at home. Then he would actually take her somewhere, such as to dinner, and he would spend money, his own money, on her. He was then supposed to bring her back to her own home at a reasonable time. Perhaps if it went well, she might give him a quick kiss, and agree to see him again.

Of course, I say a lot of this and jest, but what makes it strangely funny is that, although most young people of heard of the dating I’m describing, many seldom experience it with any real frequency. Back when I was in High School and College, the goal was to have a date every Friday or Saturday. Frankly very little was on T.V. Friday nights, since it was presumed that most young people would be “out on dates.”

We are living in a very strange world. At any rate, the first thing I think we can do is tell funny stories like these. When I do so, I hope to tweak the young men into some change of behavior where, instead of just hoping to see certain women at group functions they actually seek to court a particular woman, and even more, search for a wife.

As a priest in Washington DC, I talk with a lot of young women and am shocked that so many of these very beautiful women are seldom asked out by men. It’s just crazy! What’s wrong with young men? If I were still young and dating I’d be asking them out!

Some folks blame pornography and surmise that many men prefer fantasy to real women. Others blame the breakdown of the Church and family that used to help facilitate meeting and dating through dances and other socials. Others blame the hook-up scene (hooking-up is NOT dating) wherein men and women gather more in groups, arriving independently and “hooking up” with whoever. Promiscuity also devastates marriage, since there is very little incentive for men to commit to marriage when they get one of its central motivators (sex) for free. And if marriage isn’t a real priority, why court a woman. And is marriage and courting are unnecessary why date?

Perhaps you can state other reasons. I don’t want to be unfair to men. These are complicated issues. But traditionally it was men who took the initiative and most traditional Catholic girls still feel like that is how it should be.

But frankly, I also have to tell a lot of young women today that, like it or not, they’re going to have to take some initiative. For example, if they see a young man who they would like to ask them out, perhaps they can go right up to him and say, “It’s alright to ask me out.” or, “Ask me out you fool.” Or, “when are you going to get around to asking me to dance?”

Back when I was in school, I had several young women who wanted to signal me that they were interested. They would often send words through one of their friends who would say something like, “She likes you, ask her out.” And in many cases, I would oblige!

My college sweetheart got things started with me that way. I was really surprised she wanted to go out with me, she was so very very pretty, I didn’t think she’d be interested in an ordinary guy like me. I also figured she probably had lots of other suitors. So this was important information for me that she was interested, and I acted on it immediately. I practically ran up to her and asked her out.

I am interested in your thoughts, especially if you’re a young adult. What’s going on here? Ultimately I think its pretty serious since it is tied in with the cultural demise of marriage and also the rise of promiscuity. Help me, nearing “codger” status, to understand the causes, and also venture some solutions.

It’s all in the teleology.

Young ladies have power that they don’t realize they have.

My older son is in college. Most people don’t “date” regularly and few people form relationships oriented toward marriage. There are some folks who are “in a relationship,” which mostly means that they have sex exclusively with each other, but not with any great long-term commitment.

Yet, it seems, some marriages do result from some of these relationships over time. Many young folks DO want to find husbands and wives, and DO want to marry, but the social conventions under which they labor frustrate their secret desires.

My son, one of a small set of Rigid, un-Frankian, Judgmental, Morally-Stern, Antequarianly-Chaste Catholics on campus, has had no lack of pretty, sweet, interesting, intelligent young women to date since arriving on campus a year and a half ago. And the dates are old-fashioned dates. An afternoon at the museum. Dinner at the club. A movie. A Catholic social event. A school dance. He’s also engaged in “group dates” from which he’s identified young ladies wishing to be dated one-on-one by him.

He also has been very firm about three rules, and very public, as well. He is interested in dating romantically to find someone to marry. She must be (or become) a Catholic. No sex before marriage.

Although I don’t think anyone openly ridiculed him (he’s in a place that is surprisingly tolerant), I know that he raised many eyebrows.

He has had no lack of young ladies interested in having a more serious, exclusive dating relationship with him. In fact, his girlfriend last semester was a young girl brought up as an atheist who was willing to consider conversion in order to further the relationship toward marriage. Once he realized that her inability to accept the concept of Original Sin doomed the relationship, he broke up with her. But, even though they had a pretty deep emotional bond, because they’d never had sex, the break-up was sad, but reasoned, without much drama. The young lady agreed with his conclusion that although they both had very strong feelings for each other, their respective worldviews were just too different to enable them to form a happy, permanent relationship.

Swiftly, he found himself sought out by another young lady to date seriously who had almost literally been “waiting in the wings.” She is a fallen-away Lutheran who is more than willing to come into communion with the Church in order to marry him. I suspect that they are much more compatible, and it would be unsurprising if they were to eventually marry. But if they don’t, my son is aware of other young ladies on campus who would love the opportunity to date him seriously.

Many, many intelligent young women are starving for good, decent men who want nothing more than to find someone to love them with all their hearts as Christ loves the Church, and to date in order to find the right person who will love them in that way. But few young men seem ready to emulate my son’s model.

His young gentlemen friends are astonished that it’s as if the young ladies line up to date him, with the goal of determining whether or not marriage to him is a realistic prospect.

My son’s a bright guy, has a sterling personality, is kind and generous (but also has a biting wit), is a good, honest, decent, loyal friend, is pretty good looking, and hard-working. But on his campus, there are plenty of smarter, handsomer, stronger, brilliant, hardworking young gentlemen of good character, too.

But they are merely taking their cue from the ladies, most of whom give no overt signals that this is what they want from their male prospects. When my son went to college, he was pretty firm about how he was going to conduct himself. But he told us that he despaired of finding anyone who wanted to date seriously, take the time to form a deep relationships, take delight in each others’ personality, who wanted to explore the possibility of marriage, who would understand the importance of sharing religious faith and belief, and who would be willing to wait for marriage. The young ladies weren’t giving any signals that they were receptive to such overtures, that they would like to date, rather than just all go out in groups, or keep it all “just friends,” or engage in casual sex. Even the girls in the Catholic Student Association didn’t seem to engage in the flirting and behaviors that encourage the gentlemen to ask them out on real dates.

However, knowing upfront my son’s intentions, absolutely not one young lady has turned him down for an initial date. A couple ladies have had previous engagements for specific events to which he’d asked them, but they made quite clear to him that they would like to be asked out again by him for a more mutually-convenient time. “I’m not interested,” hasn’t been in the lexicon of any young lady he’s asked out.

And among his gentlemen friends, many wish they would attract the ladies thusly, as many are secretly marriage-minded, too. But they’re trapped within social conventions which are sub-optimal and lead to messy, damaging relationships that hurt everyone all around. Or no relationship at all.

When one denies the purpose of things, one frustrates the means as well as their end.

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