Dating, Courtship and Marriage

This month's Touchstone Magazine has a symposium on dating, courtship and marriage. I have enjoyed skimming the articles and plan to read them closely. The points of view range from parent's choosing their children's spouses to discussing the wisdom of "third party" Christian match-making services to seeing the issues in terms of civil liberty. Here are some of Jocelyn Mathewes comments about the distorted culture of romance and the tendency to extend adolescence...which she believes have created a toxic environment for seeking a mate. She adds: "The culture of romance created very unhealthy attitudes towards our relationships with one another, sexual and otherwise. Marriage as both an achievable and desirable goal is no longer a universally accepted norm. And lifelong marriage as the primary purpose of seeking out a partner is no longer the accepted norm. They have been replaced by the search for a soul mate, a very diferent goal, involving ideals like "sexual compatibility" and "lifestyle choices." Sex outside of marriage has become a part of the search, and because sex now takes a more casual role in relationships, it has helped turn "hanging out" into "hooking up." This extended adolescence encourages ongoing romantic torment and "experimentation" even into one's thirties. Many (some scarred by divorce, their parents' or their own) seem to live in terror of making any sort of commitment, for fear of getting it wrong. Some have had no examples in their lives of how such a commitment could go wonderfully right."