When considering the practices of courting and marrying, one might suppose that evaluating them in their historical setting is irrelevant; one could, after all, know that courtship entails “sitting on the porch with a farmer’s daughter,” or—vaguely—“a somewhat ritualized practice pertaining to the proper socialization of romantic affection.” Indeed, courtship could seem rather archaic, especially insofar as a particular, historically embedded practice of courting might entail “spending time with the family” prior to any meaningful commitment on the part of the “couple.” To suppose that one could contemporarily “court,” one might argue, seems altogether absurd, for men and women no longer “court,” the objection might continue; rather, they “date” only thereafter to become “boy-friend” and “girl-friend” (and only when the process has gone askew does dating necessarily include “hooking-up”). What room is left for a discussion of ages past, then, if it is fairly well accepted that this is true? Would such questioning even be necessary? To do so, one might suspect, could only end in an insular and misguided account, a rather quaint worldview hardly relevant to present-day matters.

However, the not so irrelevant past is a prized possession for those who have yet to despair of the need for marriage and the expectation of pre-marital preparation. For those so concerned, openness to two simple claims is all-important: that the resources to answer many of our contemporary questions concerning human connectedness may have been offered long ago, and that without such resources solutions to the dissolution of marriage and marriageability might remain perpetually inaccessible. The task is to determine both the extent to which these resources are relevant, if at all, and the possibility for the assimilation of what is seemingly deceased into a vital and progressive era. For an adequate accounting of such a possibility, first, a mention of the context within which these “resources” are utilized is needed, and then, an evaluation of how they might possibly assimilate could follow.

The contemporary pervasive scripts for both marriage and marriageability, not surprising to a protagonist of the Love and Fidelity Network, are quite the opposite of a sustainable love. The real path to lasting-love, as modern scripts seem to indicate, or love of any kind for that matter, emerges only after “getting to know oneself, what one likes and dislikes, and what one’s tastes are” by spending time with as many men or women as possible prior to making any lasting commitments. This way, when a potential “love-match” is presented, the sensibilities cultivated through personal exploration can act as an adequate guide to the determination of the “fittingness” of the presented candidate. Although this all sounds rather intentional, and maybe even premeditated, once exploration has subsided, and firm sensibilities are acquired, love, marriage, and all that develops with them “just happens” for those who are so disposed; in fact, in this view, it is more injurious to desire marriage as opposed to “letting it happen naturally.” It is as though the expectation is that only if love were to materialize when one wasn’t “searching” for it in the first place, could it rightfully be deemed worthwhile, for, after all, it “only happens when you least expect it”—I suppose given such expectations we should soon begin to see love occur only when we do intentionally seek it. [1] Brad Wilcox, in his co-presented lecture entitled “Wedded Bliss: Wandering to the Altar,” presented at the recent UVA hosted, LFN Regional conference entitled “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Making Sense of Complementarity and Difference Among the Sexes,” rightly identified this sort of “script” as a certain lack of social norms, which engenders the “sliding-vs.-deciding” phenomenon, coined by Dr. Scott Stanley. [2]

Sliding vs. deciding, according to Wilcox and Stanley, is perhaps the script most indicative of modern relationships and marriages. The perhaps all too common theme is this: a man and a woman never quite decide to start “dating”—there’s an ambiguity here as to whether they are “going on dates” or actually dating (what subtle language we have!)—they, in fact, stumble upon the prospect of an enduring love: perhaps they spent a significant amount of time together during class or happened to meet each other through some chance event; either way, it would be highly unlikely they intended to “meet” each other before they first saw each other, nor would it be common for their “meeting” to be planned. As for feelings, men and women don’t inspire them, they are only chance events to be savored and encouraged. Of course, the only natural conclusion from the prolonged presence of such feelings, so the descent continues, is a “meaningful” commitment, constant physical presence, and for those of a certain age, incessant text-conversations as if to strengthen a bond. Thereafter, since those so transfixed would not uncommonly be deeply uncertain as to how long their feelings would remain—and most likely had been burnt before—they might decide to move in with one another, because “that’s what people do to be sure that their love will last.” And last, the ultimate accident in this precipitous connection: the emotional bond becomes so strong that the couple is incapable of living without the delight the other offers—in fact, they might identify a pressing need to get married, despite all the evidence otherwise. If asked to describe their assurance of the marriage to be, the couple might offer prosaic answers to their assurance with no more than “it just happened”; and when asked why they started to date in the first place—of course, why they wanted to start actually dating—they might not know. Thus they “slid” into marriage through a series of events much more than they made an intentional choice to do so, at every critical juncture there leading.

The reasonable question, it seems, for those who desire marriage, is whether this “precipitous connection” is the best option; after all, it seems rather arbitrary if not silly. Are all those who desire the good of marriage to just stand idly by, waiting for the “ultimate accident”? Or is there another way in which to interpret pre-marital possibilities, where thought is loosened from the pre-reflective biases that come with being an unmarried man or woman in a liberal, secular, pluralist society such as our own? Surely there is at least one alternative, if not many, and the greater one’s investment in the study of alternative scripts, the more attractive alternatives seem to be, especially when compared with such a whimsical, formless process as that mentioned above—even the Romantic tradition has more to offer than the most faint and fickle guide of unscripted fancy; they at least, to various degrees, fan into flames the desire for the beloved. Hence, even if only for the unreliability of such a process, remedy would not unreasonably be sought elsewhere. To access other options, and options relevant to present-day practice, one must invest in the acquisition of “tradition-sensitive reasoning”—“the virtue of having an adequate sense of the traditions to which one belongs or which confront one” [3]—the development of which occurs as a tri-partite and arduous process.

The first portion of the task is to ask the all-important question: how did the prevailing social script become the one highlighted above; in other words, what is the “story” of the transformation of the practices of courtship throughout the last 100 years? Then, if we’re to be good students of cultural transformation, we need to access not only the narrative of 19^th–21^st century American courtships of various forms and communities, but narratives altogether different in community, era, and tradition. The evolution of modern courtship is a foundational resource for constructing a narrative—and a large one at that—about how “wooing” [to solicit or sue a woman in love, especially with a view to marriage] became “pursuing” [seeking to acquire and obtain a desired good, whatever that good may be], how “sitting on the porch, or speaking in the parlor,” became intimate dancing in night-clubs with strangers, and 200 dollar meals spent on unknown partners, and how parents came to be seen as an incorrigibly ignorant impasse instead of a loving source of guidance and wisdom.

The second portion of the task is to evaluate and judge the degree to which we would like to remain a participant—enabler, perhaps—in a series of practices that are the fruition of the uncovered, historical narrative. More than this, the second task is to evaluate the various means of reacting to and responding to—nostalgia, innovation, and cynicism, to name a few—a knowledge that straddles the current script and an alternative history, which confers an occasion for the analysis, evaluation, and discernment of a current script most capably advanced in a dialectic with those who also possess an evaluative comprehension of alternative scripts.

The final portion of the task is to alter one’s actions to the greatest degree possible given an ineluctable limitation: others, for the most part, will not have undergone the same arduous process of tracing the historical roots of the various contemporary social scripts they inhabit, and so to act otherwise would not translate into the accessible, evaluative tools they possess. For example, although a woman might understand a few conditions for the evaluation of “suitability” in 19^th century courtship—the expectation of a man to demonstrate his respectability by talking to her only in the context of home and family prior to explicit, paternal permission otherwise—she would recognize that this would doubtfully occur given the prevailing ethos of the day. Or consider, for example, the reactions the poor man would receive who decided to express himself through feelings characteristic of “Storm and Stress,” an anti-Enlightenment literary movement which began in 18^th century Germany. The manner of extravagance and excess to his declarations of love would hardly be received with an open embrace in today’s culture of “accidental” love. [4] Thus, it seems a reasonable principle of limitation has been identified: only that which somehow translates into contemporary parlance and modes of feeling and thought, is a suitable candidate for use in an evaluation of what is to be done.

The tri-partite structure here discussed—accessing historical narrative, evaluating its contents and the manner in which it relates to one’s personal narrative, and isolating inventive possibilities—comes with a striking limitation, however: it can hardly have any effect if done alone, and the knowledge gained far outweighs the possibilities for actual, practical implementation. One reasonable suspicion is that for all the knowledge gained through this particular form of historical survey, nothing would actually change in the order of practical deliberation and a fortiori, the task of gaining access to alternative traditions is altogether pointless. Though reasonable, this criticism is nonetheless misguided.

The purpose of reviewing ages past is not, as the suspicion rightly detects, an attempt to impress an imperfect era on another imperfect era, but is rather an attempt, first, to acknowledge the biases one carries as an unsuspecting participant in a certain tradition [biases are, indeed, important insofar as they provide a pre-determined and readily accessible resource for evaluation, but when one is unaware of their biases they are incapable of rationally scrutinizing the components of their pre-reflectively held knowledge] and second, to navigate the possibilities for innovation made available by the past [e.g., when we access the historical narrative surrounding a contemporary practice we are able to get a better sense as to what is essential to the practice, and what is accidental—accidental here being that which is subject to alteration and historical individuation without fundamentally altering the kind of practice discussed, and essential being that without which this could no longer be considered a member of a similar class: for example, exclude an institutional sanction and you no longer have marriage, you only have the well-wishing of two smitten individuals.]

For all the seeming futility of discerning the merits and demerits of ages past, one’s evaluative capacity is elevated through the process of such an analysis. Once again, the task is not to impose a previous script in an impossible manner, but rather to have at hand the maxims, beliefs, and feelings of times other than our own so as to have a wider set of resources. Once these maxims, beliefs, and feelings are at hand, the only task thatdoes remain is to develop a “kind of capacity for judgment which the agent possesses in knowing how to select among the relevant stack of maxims and how to apply them in particular situations.” [5] This virtue is, in effect, a “bridge” between the old and the new insofar as it brings to bear the relevant maxims of ages past to bear on the contemporary context without an agent losing hold of participation in the society and tradition of which it is ineluctably a member.

While it would be far beyond the scope of this meager entry to reproduce the history of how pre-marital scripts have seriously changed in the past 100 years, much less to account for the past 1000,—and for that, to evaluate the breadth of possibilities for how our society might possess the capacity for alteration,—it seems not unreasonable to suspect that courtship could quite possibly see another, unique embodiment. This is to say; perhaps we can take a cue from ages past and begin to participate in a purposeful practice at least cognizant of the end towards which it aims—marriage—where not only “deciding” occurs, but the bold attempt to win the heart of a beloved is the obvious precursor to acceptance for marriage. Indeed, where sliding seems absurd, and purposeful pre-marital scripts the given. Yet only our capacity to engage the historical transformation of pre-marital practices would give us sufficient corroboration for this claim. My thought, however, is that so long as men and women still marry—or at least desire to marry—the possibility at least for courtship exists; albeit, one unique to the community within which it is practiced and with rules and expectations suitable for the community at hand.

If Amy Kass adequately defines courtship in her article, “A Case for Courtship,” then, there may yet be hope for unique embodiments of this forgotten pre-marital practice:

Human courtship is that collection of activities aimed at (1) finding and (2) winning (3) the right one (4) for marriage. Finding means more than hunting out or locating; it means also finding out if the located one is really right. Winning means both gaining reciprocation of exclusive amorous interest and affection and securing; consent and decision to marry. Discovering whether he or she is the right one – the heart of courtship -depends on taste and judgment, discernment and self-knowledge. But, to know the right one for marriage means first knowing something of what marriage means and entails, what it means deliberately and self-consciously to make a life with another human being – a life governed not only by erotic attachment but by promised fidelity and devotion, mutual respect and care, and – at least in principle – open to procreation and perpetuation. [6]

However, a much needed analysis into the nature of “courtly love”—the sentiment at the heart of courtship practices—is desirable to evaluate the extent to which we would hope to restore the maxims inherent to the courtly tradition, if at all, and the degree to which “courtship” is a suitable candidate for a noble and wise, pre-marital script, capable of providing the occasion for lasting-love.

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[1] I hope the humor of such advice is now more than manifest.

[2] S. Stanley, Sliding vs. Deciding, accessed at http://www.slidingvsdeciding.blogspot.com

[3] A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3^rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2007), 223.

[4] Bayard Quincy Morgan, trans., introduction to The Sufferings of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1968), vi–vii: “We need to recall such facts when we approach a story which is in many respects so foreign to our present modes of thought and expression. Young men today, however greatly they may be influenced by emotion, do not shed ‘a thousand tears’ or impress ‘a thousand kisses’ on a lady’s picture. But this is the way the eighteenth century talked, the way it liked to think that a lover’s devotion should express itself. No single work can communicate to us as authentically as Werther the extravagances of feeling and utterance which mark the trend in German letters commonly designated as “Storm and Stress”, a trend which was the precursor of the Romanticism that took the lead in German literature at the turn of the century and kept it for more than thirty years.”

[5] A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, my emphasis, 223.

[6] Amy Kass, “A Case for Courtship” accessed March 21^st 2011 at http://www.americanvalues.org/Wp73.pdf

Filed under: Courtship, Dating, Hook-up, Marriage, Sexual Integrity